Articles | Volume 19, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-1377-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-1377-2022
Research article
 | 
07 Mar 2022
Research article |  | 07 Mar 2022

MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields tree cover needs calibrating in tropical savannas

Rahayu Adzhar, Douglas I. Kelley, Ning Dong, Charles George, Mireia Torello Raventos, Elmar Veenendaal, Ted R. Feldpausch, Oliver L. Phillips, Simon L. Lewis, Bonaventure Sonké, Herman Taedoumg, Beatriz Schwantes Marimon, Tomas Domingues, Luzmila Arroyo, Gloria Djagbletey, Gustavo Saiz, and France Gerard

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Cited articles

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Short summary
The MODIS Vegetation Continuous Fields (VCF) product underestimates tree cover compared to field data and could be underestimating tree cover significantly across the tropics. VCF is used to represent land cover or validate model performance in many land surface and global vegetation models and to train finer-scaled Earth observation products. Because underestimation in VCF may render it unsuitable for training data and bias model predictions, it should be calibrated before use in the tropics.
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