GBOV (Copernicus Ground-Based Observation for Validation) service: latest product updates and evolutions for EO data Cal/Val

GBOV (Copernicus Ground-Based Observation for Validation), is an element of CLMS (Copernicus Land Monitoring Service). Its initial purpose was to support yearly validation effort of core CLMS product (TOC-R, Albedo, LAI, FAPAR, FCOVER, SSM and LST), five of whom are listed among GCOS Essential Climate Variables (ECV). GBOV has however reached a much larger community with about 1200 users, including ESA optical MPC. There is a large variety of ground data publicly available through numerous networks including ICOS, BSRN, NEON, TERN, SurfRad … For GBOV service, the choice was made to focus on data from permanent deployment, i.e. long-term datasets, rather than field campaign data. Indeed, this reduces the number of available ground variables, but long-term deployments ensure the maximum of ground to satellite data matchups as well as measurement protocols consistency.

GBOV provides ground measurement (the so-called “Reference Measurements”) to the community, but its fundamental interest is that up-scaling procedures are applied to these ground measurements in order to provide ARVD (Analysis Ready Validation Data) to the community, the so-called “Land Products”. GBOV service is freely accessible on https://land.copernicus.eu/global/gbov and provides data over 112 sites. Available ground data variables include: Top of Canopy Reflectance (ToC-R), surface albedo, Leaf Area Index (LAI), Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Available Radiation (FAPAR), Fraction of Covered ground (FCover), Surface Soil Moisture (SSM) and Land Surface Temperature (LST).

The networks providing GBOV initial input data are unfortunately not evenly distributed. In an attempt to reduce the thematic and geographical gap, GBOV is developing its own network as part of collaboration with the existing networks. In GOBV phase 1, six ground stations have been upgraded with additional instrumentation. In GBOV phase 2, a ground station has been deployed in August 2023 on Fuji Hokuroku research station in Japan for vegetation variables monitoring. This is part of a collaboration with NIES (National Institute of Environmental Studies). In 2024, a vegetation station will be installed over Fontainebleau research station (France) as part of a GBOV/ICOS collaboration. Fuji Hokuroku and Litchfield (TERN network Australia) will receive a GBOV LST station in 2024.

Over the past year, several updates have been implemented in GBOV database to better respond to CLMS and general users requirements. This includes improved uncertainty estimates for vegetation products, improved procedure for Soil Moisture and LST products. More effort is being made for the end-to-end uncertainty budget computation.

This presentation will emphasis product status and recent product evolutions.