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    • Phenoregions For Monitoring Vegetation Responses to Climate Change

    Metadata Updated: September 18, 2025

    The overall purpose in this research was to identify the regions of the world best suited for long-term monitoring of biospheric responses to climate change, i.e. monitoring land surface phenology. The user is referred to White et al. [2005] for further details. Using global 8 km 1982 to 1999 Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data and an eight-element monthly climatology, we identified pixels consistently dominated by annual cycles and then created phenologically and climatically self-similar clusters, which we term phenoregions. We then ranked and screened each phenoregion as a function of landcover homogeneity and consistency, evidence of human impacts, and political diversity.This dataset contains material providing users with direct access to data used to construct the figures in White et al. [2005]. Users are referred to this reference for additional information. Data files include ASCII and binary versions of the image files for the 500 elemental phenoregions and the 136 final monitoring phenoregions (shown in figure below) and a corresponding .jpg map. Also included are the classification data in tabular ACSII format for each of the 500 elemental phenoregions.Selected monitoring phenoregions. Phenoregions with fewer than 100 pixels or dominated by crop, urban or barren landcover removed. The 136 remaining phenoregions are those passing the screening factors in Table 1 and are shown with normalized rankings by landcover. (From White et al., 2005)

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
    Metadata Updated Date September 18, 2025
    Publisher ORNL_DAAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier 10.3334/ORNLDAAC/799
    Data Last Modified 2025-09-11
    Category Earth Science
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 429173a6-2003-4836-99e3-5b54409e97ed
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Homepage URL https://search.earthdata.nasa.gov/search?q=WhitePhenoregions_799&ac=true
    Old Spatial {"WestBoundingCoordinate":-180.0,"NorthBoundingCoordinate":90.0,"EastBoundingCoordinate":180.0,"SouthBoundingCoordinate":-90.0},"CARTESIAN"
    Program Code 026:000
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 704951a0f723af84e371f40a57440e939d4fc0a4497db9dc4dd6495828dbee43
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 1982-01-01/1982-01-01

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