Biogeophysical Parameters

The goal of the Biogeophysical Parameters Service (BioPar) is to set up pre-operational infrastructures for providing an extensive range of bio-geophysical parameters on regional, European, and global scale, both in near-real-time (NRT) and off-line mode. These variables describe:

• The continental vegetation: Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Absorbed PAR (FAPAR), Fraction of vegetation cover, Dry Matter Productivity (DMP), Normalised Density Vegetation Index (NDVI), Phenology, Burnt Areas;
• The energy budget: albedo, downwelling shortwave and longwave fluxes, Land Surface Temperature (LST);
• The water cycle: Soil Water Index (SWI), freeze and thaw conditions, small water bodies.

The BioPar concept relies on research actions (definition, improvement and customisation of algorithms to match user requirements, development activities), development activities (implementation of these algorithms in processing lines) and demonstration operations (generation of test data sets for validation and user utility assessment). Independent teams perform the product validation following guidelines defined by the Land Product Validation (LPV) group of the CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites). The operation centres perform the pre-operational production in NRT and the resulting bio-geophysical products are disseminated to the users via the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI).

• Bio-geophysical parameters provided on regional, European and global scale in NRT and off-line;
• Indicators cover vegetation state, energy budget at surface level and water cycle;
• Support of European policies on environment and water management, agriculture and food security.

For further details please consult the BioPar Service flyer (2,1 MB) or contact the BioPar team by Email.

The BioPar products and services are accessible on the geoland2 SDI Expert portal.