Abstract:

Abstract Land surface phenology from time series of satellite data are expected to contribute to improve the representation of vegetation phenology in earth system models. We characterized the baseline phenology of the vegetation at the global scale from GEOCLIM-LAI, a global climatology of leaf area index (LAI) derived from 1-km SPOT VEGETATION time series for 1999-2010. The calibration with ground measurements showed that the start and end of season were best identified using respectively 30% and 40% threshold of LAI amplitude values. The satellite-derived phenology was spatially consistent with the global distributions of climatic drivers and biome land cover. The accuracy of the derived phenological metrics, evaluated using available ground observations for birch forests in Europe, cherry in Asia and lilac shrubs in North America showed an overall root mean square error lower than 19 days for the start, end and length of season, and good agreement between the latitudinal gradients of VEGETATION LAI phenology and ground data.

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