clcOctober2010

October 2010 CLC Summary


Greetings, student climate scientists!

We are pleased to share some of the results of your efforts collecting land cover data and site photographs during the October 2010 GLOBE Climate and Land Cover Project. As you probably remember, satellite imagery can be used to help determine different land cover types across the globe, however these land cover classifications must be validated to ensure that they are correct. Your data helps with this validation process by providing in situ (or "in place") observations of your local vegetation and land cover.

Climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) have accessed your photographs from October 2010 and are in the process of comparing them with satellite imagery to validate the land cover in your area. NOAA scientists and modelers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) feel that the pictures from GLOBE schools are very helpful data for their land use research and modeling efforts. While photographs of many different sites are valuable data, seasonal images of the same site are particularly useful.

The next step is for you to take another set of digital site photographs. In most places you should be able to see variations in your local vegetation cover due to seasonal changes. Seasonal photographs work best to enable scientists to estimate the potential for carbon dioxide use by vegetation in a region. Remember, plants take in carbon dioxide from the air and give off oxygen. This study will help you better understand the relationship between carbon and vegetation and how much carbon is stored in trees. It will also help you better understand the role of carbon in climate change and how the Earth's biological system influences greenhouse gases. This is very important information in helping climate scientists track the carbon budget.

Here are some ways that your data and photographs will improve scientists' research.

First, the land cover observations and photographs that GLOBE schools take are important for the land cover project because these pictures give a perspective from the ground level. This shows landscape characteristics and helps determine landscape type. Verification of land cover across the globe is a crucial step for climate models.

As you can see we need more pictures to better verify this landscape because it is very diverse with croplands, needle leaf forests, and grass lands. The more pictures that GLOBE students can provide which are representative of the land cover, the more helpful the pictures will be for our research.

We are realizing that in certain regions there are gaps in our database. Those that require additional information and pictures are areas that have a mixture of land cover. For example, there is a need for additional imagery in places with both cropland and urban land use; in regions with cropland, urban areas, and forests; and in regions with wetlands and urban areas.

It is important to document vegetation changes during each season to see how different each region looks throughout the year. Of course, if you live near the equator, you may not see as much variation from one season to the next. It will be interesting for everyone to view the photographs and make comparisons between what it looks like where you live and where others live. Your contribution to this project is essential to make it a success. We will continue to provide updates on the progress that the climate scientists are making and will continue to process the land cover classification and site photographs that you provide. By helping scientists improve vegetation maps used in climate models, you can help increase the understanding of the relationships between climate and land cover, which is the purpose of this project.

Once again, we want to extend our appreciation to each one of you for the outstanding land cover photographs you submitted for the October 2010 Climate and Land Cover Project. We hope you will participate again in the April—May 2011 Intensive Observational Period. Remember, science takes time but, in the end, obtaining scientifically accurate results makes the wait worthwhile.

All the best,
The Climate and Land Cover Science Team at NOAA