Marine primary productivity is not available from the NASA Ocean Color website. Currently the best product available for marine primary productivity is available through Oregon State University’s Ocean Productivity Project. A monthly global Net Primary Productivity product at 9 km spatial resolution has been selected for this analysis. The algorithm used to create the primary productivity is a Vertically Generalized Production Model (VGPM) created by Behrenfeld and Falkowski (1997). It is a “chlorophyll-based” model that estimates net primary production from chlorophyll using a temperature-dependent description of chlorophyll photosynthetic efficiency (O’Malley 2010). Inputs to the function are chlorophyll, available light, and photosynthetic efficiency.

The Snow Covered Area product is based on a Normalized Difference Snow Index(NDSI), which is similar to NDVI, but exploits different bands in the equation (Equation 3),namely Green (Band 4) and Short Wavelength Near-infrared (SWNIR, Band 6). It isimportant to note that the Band 6 sensor on MODIS Aqua malfunctioned shortly after launch,so Snow Covered Area from the Aqua sensor is calculated using Bands 3 and 7. This mayintroduce errors in identifying snow in vegetated areas, as the use of Band 7 results in falsesnow detection. For this reason the MODIS Terra product has been provided for the CAFF-system.

The MODIS Land Cover Type product is created yearly using three landclassification schemes; the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP)classification scheme, the Univertiy of Maryland (UMD) classification scheme, and aMODIS-derived Leaf Area Index /Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation(LAI/fPAR) classification scheme (Table 3). The International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) identifies seventeenland cover classes, including eleven natural vegetation classes, three non-vegetated landclasses, and three developed land classes. The product provided is derived using the samealgorithm as the 500 m Land Cover Type (MOD12Q1), but is on a 0.05° Climate Model Grid(CMG), that has been clipped to the pan-Arctic extent. The UMD classification scheme issimilar to the IGBP classification scheme, but it excludes the Permanent wetlands,Cropland/Natural vegetation mosaic, and the Snow and ice classes. The LAI/fPARclassification scheme is the smallest of the three, and focuses on forest structure; it only haseleven classes. All three land cover classification schemes are provided, but the IGBPclassification scheme is the most amenable to the Pan-Arctic region.