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The Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX [Internet Link]) is the element of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) charged with promoting the scientific investigation of the "fast" component of the Earth's climate system. The International Satellite Land-Surface Climatology Project (ISLSCP) is one of several projects (within the Global Hydrology Project (GHP) of the GEWEX and has the lead role in addressing land-atmosphere interactions -- specifically, process modeling, data retrieval algorithms, field experiment design and execution, and the development of global data sets. Since its inception in 1983, ISLSCP has conceived and participated in a number of workshops, field experiments and the production and publication of a five-volume CD-ROM collection of global data sets to support energy, water, and biogeochemical cycling studies covering 1987 to 1988 -- the ISLSCP Initiative I CD-ROM Set. Following its completion in 1994, ISLSCP members have continued to meet on a regular basis, evaluating the Initiative I data collection and defining the requirements for an expanded data collection, ISLSCP Initiative II.
In 1999 Drs. Forrest G. Hall and Blanche Meeson of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center initiated the production and publication of the ISLSCP Initiative II data collection with core funding from NASA and participation from many other national and international institutions, agencies and universities. Initiative II expanded the two-year period of Initiative I to ten years (1986 to 1995) and increased the spatial resolution from one degree to 0.5 and 0.25 degrees. More refined algorithms were employed to generate the data sets, and many new data types were added. The ISLSCP Initiative II staff at the Goddard Space Flight Center consists of Dr. Eric Brown de Colstoun (Data Collection Development/Integration), Mr. Dave Landis (Data Integration), Dr. Sietse Los (Land Cover Production) and Dr. Lahouari Bounoua and Dr. James Collatz (Current PI). Except for the land cover biophysical characteristics data set produced at GSFC, all other data sets were produced by other projects funded at various university and government institutions and provided to the ISLSCP staff who oversaw the quality checking, editing, gap-filling, reformatting, and documentation. An ISLSCP working group met regularly and was critical to the coordination, production and publication of the various data sets in the data collection. Dr. Paul Dirmeyer of the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere (COLA) Studies and staff were enormously helpful in processing and staging the many of the ISLSCP II data sets. The instigator of ISLSCP Initiative I was Dr. Piers Sellers, now of the Astronaut Office, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The current ISLSCP Chair is Dr. Paval Kabat is at the DLO Winand Staring Centre in the Netherlands.
A review of past ISLSCP activities can be found in the following publication:
Sellers, P.J., B.W. Meeson, F.G. Hall, G. Asrar, R.E. Murphy, R.A. Schiffer, F.P. Bretherton, R.E. Dickinson, R.G. Ellingson, C.B. Field, K.F. Huemmrich, C.O. Justice, J.M. Melack, N.T. Roulet, D.S. Schimel, and P.D. Try. 1995. Remote sensing of the land surface for studies of global change: Models - algorithms - experiments. Remote Sens. Environ. 51(1):3-26.
The intent is to produce a consistent collection of high priority global data sets using existing data sources and algorithms, designed to satisfy the needs of modelers. The global data sets are mapped at consistent spatial and temporal resolutions and are compiled in four key areas: land cover, hydrometeorology, radiation, and soils. The data sets cover those four areas, span the 10-year period, 1986-1995, and are mapped to consistent grids (0.5 x 0.5 degree for topography and land cover, 1 x 1 degree for meteorological parameters). The temporal resolution for most data sets is monthly; however, a few are at a finer resolution (e.g., 3-hourly).
As data sets from the ISLSCP II data collection become available from the providing institutions, they will be placed on line at this Web site. The primary purpose of doing so is to provide the ISLSCP user community access to data sets as quickly as possible and to obtain feedback from that community. Some data sets may have only partial documentation or may otherwise be incomplete. Contents of the data sets may be updated without notice. The staff would appreciate any feedback you may have on the data sets or this Web site.
The ISLSCP Initiative II Working Group was formed to guide the development of the ISLSCP Initiative II data collection.
| GEWEX Representative | Paul Try, Richard Lawford (GEWEX) |
| Hydro-Meteorology Modeling | Randy Koster (NASA/GSFC) |
| Carbon Modeling | Scott Denning (Colorado State Univ.) |
| Near-Surface Meteorology | Alan Betts (ECMWF), Glenn White (NOAA/NCEP) |
| Radiation/Clouds | Paul Stackhouse (NASA/Langley) |
| Land Cover | Ruth Defries (Univ. of Maryland), Alan Strahler (Boston Univ.) |
| Topo/Soils/Runoff/Roots | Paul Dirmeyer (Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies), Balazs Fekete (Univ. of New Hampshire) |
| Precipitation | George Huffman (NASA/GSFC), Arnold Gruber (NOAA/NESDIS) |
| Carbon Data | Scott Denning (Colorado State Univ.), Dick Olson (ORNL), Ichtiaque Rasool (Univ. of Paris VI) |
ISLSCP Initiative II is associated with a number of other related projects, including projects under GEWEX and IGBP.
Related Pages:
ISLSCP Initiative II Home
ISLSCP II Introduction
Revision Date: June 8, 2005