Dear GLOBE Students and Teachers,
Thank you for your participation in the October 2011 Climate and Land Cover (CLC) Intensive Observing Period (IOP).This IOP is part of the GLOBE Student Climate Research Campaign and will take place every three months.
In the October IOP we received 35 data entries of land cover photographs submitted from countries in GLOBE regions such as Europe/Eurasia, North America, and Latin America/Caribbean. These data entries are helping us validate land cover types all over the world. We hope that in the upcoming IOPs we will have entries from every GLOBE region!
Not only do these photographs assist in validating land cover data; but the photographs also provide documentation of how the landscape changes from season to season and from year to year. Such recurring data entries help build a long-term set of data that enable us to study climate and the impacts of climate changes on land cover.
As an example, below we are highlighting photographs from the TrebicSchool in the Czech Republic. They entered land cover photographs of the same site in October 2010 and again in the October 2011 IOP. You can see from the figures below how the land cover looks different, even at the same time of year, from one year to the next. A potential research project could be to analyze the temperature and precipitation data for each year to reveal why the landscape is more lush and green in October 2011 than it was in October 2010.
Thus, it is so important to keep submitting seasonal photographs! We look forward to seeing your photographs that you submit in the upcoming January IOP!
Sincerely,
The Climate and Land Cover Science Team
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Figure 1: Photographs taken Oct. 14, 2010 at site LCS-01 by ZS Trebic in the Czech Republic.
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Figure 2: Photographs taken Oct. 12, 2011 at site LCS-01 by ZS Trebic in the Czech Republic.