The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a 36-channel from visible to thermal-infrared sensor that was launched as part of the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra payload on 18 December 1999. It delivers data at 250m/500m and 1km resolution.
Software used: MRT2.3 (MODIS Reprojection Tool, see note at bottom) and GRASS5.0
MODIS/Terra Surface Reflectance Daily L2G Global 500m ISIN Grid (MOD09GHK)
Temporal Extent: 2000-06-09 to present
![]() |
|
||||||||||||||||
8 Aug 2002 - true color image composite
Part of Europe as seen from MODIS/TERRA at 500m resolution (R1 G4 B3).New snow arrived in the Alps, floods in Austria, Czech Republic and Germany due to heavy rain (up to 300mm/24h in Eastern Europe). |
MOD09GHK: The product is an estimate of the surface spectral reflectance for each band as it would have been measured at ground level if there were no atmospheric scattering or absorption. The correction scheme includes corrections for the effect of atmospheric gases, aerosols, and thin cirrus clouds; it is applied to all non-cloudy MOD35 Level 1B pixels that pass the Level 1B quality control (cited from USGS web page). |
All MODIS land products are gridded in the ISIN projection which projects analogous to the Sinusoidal projection except that the ISIN projection is centered about 0 degree longitude and special coefficients are used to flatten the ellipsoid. The ISIN projection was devised for the Level-3+ products because it employs a tessellation scheme, efficient organization, and hierarchical management of the multi-resolution data acquired by the MODIS sensor (cited from MRT/USGS page). But most of "off the shelf" and free GIS and image processing software do not support ISIN.
Software to reproject ISIN to UTM, Gauss-Boaga etc. is the MODIS Reprojection Tool (MRT) from USGS. See below an important note about the ISIN shift problem.
From late December 2002 onwards the ISIN issues are going to go away, since the v004 MODIS data will now be output in the Sinusoidal projection rather than Integerized Sinusoidal (The Earth Observer, 2002 14(5), p. 12).
Information: