Satellite Based Cropland Carbon Monitoring System.

Croplands are typically characterized by fine-scale heterogeneity, which makes it difficult to accurately estimate cropland carbon fluxes over large regions given the fairly coarse spatial resolution of high-frequency satellite observations. It is, how ever, important that we improve our ability to estimate spatially and temporally resolved carbon fluxes because croplands constitute a large land area and have a large impact on global carbon cycle. As part of NASA CMS funded project, a Satellite based Cropland Carbon Monitoing System (CCMS) was developed to estimate spatially resolved crop specific daily carbon fluxes over large regions. This modeling framework uses RS-EPIC and satellite derived crop parameters (leaf area index (LAI) based on PROSAIL inversion and crop phenology) to determine daily net primary productivity (NPP) and net ecosystem productivity (NEP).