It’s been a busy summer for the MODIS instrument! Here are a few highlights you may have missed:
‣ On July 1st, our long-serving MODIS instrument lead, Dr. Michael King, officially retired. While we’re sad to see him go and wish him the best in his new adventures, we’re excited to introduce our new MODIS lead, Dr. Miguel Roman! Look for his updated bio on the Terra website soon.
‣ The NASA Land and Atmosphere data teams held meetings in May and June (you can find presentation materials and more info with this link to the MODIS newsfeed).
‣ A brand new reprocessed MODIS cloud properties dataset that combines both Terra and Aqua data is now available for download and use. Find out more information in this informative post from the LAADS DAAC.
‣ Check out these two recent research features on the Natural Capital Project (links here and here), a collaboration among scientists, farmers, and the luxury clothing industry. Terra MODIS vegetation index data products are being used as part of this effort to model future goat-grazing land use in order to benefit both farmers and the environment. Frequent sampling and wide area coverage of MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset were leveraged and used as input for climate models, resulting in more sustainable land-use practices.