• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.69-78
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• 2011

Rice is one of the world's staple foods. Paddy rice fields have unique biophysical characteristics that the rice is grown on flooded soils unlike other crops. Information on the spatial distribution of paddy fields and the timing of irrigation are of importance to determine hydrological balance and efficiency of water resource management. In this paper, we detected the timing of irrigation and spatial distribution of paddy fields using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the NASA EOS Aqua satellite. The timing of irrigation was detected by the combined use of MODIS-based vegetation index and Land Surface Water Index (LSWI). The detected timing of irrigation showed good agreement with field observations from two flux sites in Korea and Japan. Based on the irrigation detection, a land cover map of paddy fields was generated with subsidiary information on seasonal patterns of MODIS enhanced vegetation index (EVI). When the MODISbased paddy field map was compared with a land cover map from the Ministry of Environment, Korea, it overestimated the regions with large paddies but underestimated those with small and fragmented paddies. Potential reasons for such spatial discrepancies may be attributed to coarse pixel resolution (500 m) of MODIS images, uncertainty in parameterization of threshold values for discarding forest and water pixels, and the application of LSWI threshold value developed for paddy fields in China. Nevertheless, this study showed that an improved utilization of seasonal patterns of MODIS vegetation and water-related indices could be applied in water resource management and enhanced estimation of evapotranspiration from paddy fields.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.19-26
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• 2017

Surface air temperature ($T_{air}$) is a key variable for the meteorology and climatology, and is a fundamental factor of the terrestrial ecosystem functions. Satellite remote sensing from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) provides an opportunity to monitor the $T_{air}$. However, the several problems such as frequent cloud cover and mountainous region can result in substantial retrieval error and signal loss in MODIS $T_{air}$. In this study, satellite-based $T_{air}$ was estimated under both clear and cloudy sky conditions in Gangwon Province using Aqua MODIS07 temperature profile product (MYD07_L2) and GCOM-W1 Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) brightness temperature ($T_b$) at 37 GHz frequency, and was compared with the measurements from the Automated Mountain Meteorology Stations (AMOS). The application of ambient temperature lapse rate was performed to improve the retrieval accuracy in mountainous region, which showed the improvement of estimation accuracy approximately 4% of RMSE. A simple pixel-wise regression method combining synergetic information from MYD07_L2 $T_{air}$ and AMSR2 $T_b$ was applied to estimate surface $T_{air}$ for all sky conditions. The $T_{air}$ retrievals showed favorable agreement in comparison with AMOS data (r=0.80, RMSE=7.9K), though the underestimation was appeared in winter season. Substantial $T_{air}$ retrievals were estimated 61.4% (n=2,657) for cloudy sky conditions. The results presented in this study indicate that the satellite remote sensing can produce the surface $T_{air}$ at the complex mountainous region for all sky conditions.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.481-494
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• 2011

Investigation of the $CO_2$ exchange between biosphere and atmosphere at regional, continental, and global scales can be directed to combining remote sensing with carbon cycle process to estimate vegetation productivity. NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) currently produces a regular global estimate of gross primary productivity (GPP) and annual net primary productivity (NPP) of the entire terrestrial earth surface at 1 km spatial resolution. While the MODIS GPP algorithm uses meteorological data provided by the NASA Data Assimilation Office (DAO), the sub-pixel heterogeneity or complex terrain are generally reflected due to coarse spatial resolutions of the DAO data (a resolution of $1{\circ}\;{\times}\;1.25{\circ}$). In this study, we estimated inputs retrieved from MODIS products of the AQUA and TERRA satellites with 5 km spatial resolution for the purpose of finer GPP and/or NPP determinations. The derivatives included temperature, VPD, and solar radiation. Seven AmeriFlux data located in the Corn Belt region were obtained to use for evaluation of the input data from MODIS. MODIS-derived air temperature values showed a good agreement with ground-based observations. The mean error (ME) and coefficient of correlation (R) ranged from $-0.9^{\circ}C$ to $+5.2^{\circ}C$ and from 0.83 to 0.98, respectively. VPD somewhat coarsely agreed with tower observations (ME = -183.8 Pa ~ +382.1 Pa; R = 0.51 ~ 0.92). While MODIS-derived shortwave radiation showed a good correlation with observations, it was slightly overestimated (ME = -0.4 MJ $day^{-1}$ ~ +7.9 MJ $day^{-1}$; R = 0.67 ~ 0.97). Our results indicate that the use of inputs derived MODIS atmosphere and land products can provide a useful tool for estimating crop GPP.