The MODIS land quality assessment approach

A suite of global land surface products is made on an operational basis from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument data. Quality assessment (QA) is an integral part of this production chain and is focused on evaluating and flagging product quality with respect to expected performance. This task is challenging because of the different error sources that may affect product quality, the large volume of products produced, and the dependencies that exist between them. This paper describes the QA approach adopted by the MODLAND Science Team and coordinated by the MODIS Land Data Operational Product Evaluation (LDOPE) facility.