LEDAPS: mapping North American disturbance from the Landsat record

The Landsat Ecosystem Disturbance Adaptive Processing System (LEDAPS) project is creating a record of forest disturbance and regrowth for North America from the Landsat satellite record, in support of the carbon modeling activities. LEDAPS relies on the decadal Landsat GeoCover data set supplemented by dense image time series for selected locations. Imagery is first atmospherically corrected to surface reflectance, and then change detection algorithms are used to extract disturbance area, type, and frequency. Reuse of the MODIS Land processing system (MODAPS) architecture allows rapid throughput of over 1500 MSS, TM, and ETM+ scenes. Initial ("Beta") surface reflectance products are currently available for testing, and initial disturbance products will be available by the end of 2004.