SWACI is a research project of DLR supported by the State Government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Radio signals, transmitted by modern communication and navigation systems may be heavily disturbed by space weather hazards. Thus, severe temporal and spatial changes of the electron density in the ionosphere may significantly degrade the signal quality of various radio systems which even may lead to a complete loss of the signal. By providing specific space weather information, in particular now- and forecast of the ionospheric state, the accuracy and reliability of impacted communication and navigation systems shall be improved. The equivalent slab thickness is a measure of the width of the shape of the vertical electron density profile of the ionosphere. The equivalent slab thickness is defined by the ratio of the total electron content (TEC) and the peak electron density of the local ionosphere. To compute the peak electron density, vertical sounding data from different ionosonde stations are used. The corresponding TEC data are extracted from the SWACI TEC maps. For more details see http://swaciweb.dlr.de/data-and-products/public/slabthickness/?L=1.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is a key instrument aboard the Terra (EOS AM-1) and Aqua (EOS PM-1) satellites. Terra's orbit around the Earth is timed so that it passes from north to south across the equator in the morning, while Aqua passes south to north over the equator in the afternoon. Terra MODIS and Aqua MODIS are viewing the entire Earth's surface every 1 to 2 days, acquiring data in 36 spectral bands, or groups of wavelengths (see MODIS Technical Specifications). This mosaic has been generated from Terra and Aqua products acquired between 30 September and 03 October 2011.

Comprehensive evaluation of geospatial foundation models (Geo-FMs) requires benchmarking across diverse tasks, sensors, and geographic regions. However, most existing benchmark datasets are limited to segmentation or classification tasks, and focus on specific geographic areas. To address this gap, we introduce a globally distributed dataset for forest aboveground biomass (AGB) estimation, a pixelwise regression task. This benchmark dataset combines co-located hyperspectral imagery (HSI) from the Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) satellite and predictions of AGB density estimates derived from the global ecosystem dynamics investigation (GEDI) lidars, covering seven continental regions. Our experimental results on this dataset demonstrate that the evaluated Geo- FMs can match or, in some cases, surpass the performance of a baseline U-Net, especially when fine-tuning the encoder. By releasing this globally distributed hyperspectral benchmark dataset, we aim to facilitate the development and evaluation of Geo-FMs for HSI applications. Leveraging this dataset additionally enables research into geographic bias and the generalization capacity of Geo-FMs. Published in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11164504.

This product shows the snow cover duration for a hydrological year. Its beginning differs from the calendar year, since some of the precipitation that falls in late autumn and winter falls as snow and only drains away when the snow melts in the following spring or summer. The meteorological seasons are used for subdivision and the hydrological year begins in autumn and ends in summer. The snow cover duration is made available for three time periods: the snow cover duration for the entire hydrological year (SCD), the early snow cover duration (SCDE), which extends from autumn to midwinter (), and the late snow cover duration (SCDL), which in turn extends over the period from mid-winter to the end of summer. For the northern hemisphere SCD lasts from September 1st to August 31st, for the southern hemisphere it lasts from March 1st to February 28th/29th. The SCDE lasts from September 1st to January 14th in the northern hemisphere and from March 1st to July 14th in the southern hemisphere. The SCDL lasts from January 15th to August 31st in the northern hemisphere and from July 15th to February 28th/29th in the southern hemisphere. The “Global SnowPack” is derived from daily, operational MODIS snow cover product for each day since February 2000. Data gaps due to polar night and cloud cover are filled in several processing steps, which provides a unique global data set characterized by its high accuracy, spatial resolution of 500 meters and continuous future expansion. It consists of the two main elements daily snow cover extent (SCE) and seasonal snow cover duration (SCD; full and for early and late season). Both parameters have been designated by the WMO as essential climate variables, the accurate determination of which is important in order to be able to record the effects of climate change. Changes in the largest part of the cryosphere in terms of area have drastic effects on people and the environment. For more information please also refer to: Dietz, A.J., Kuenzer, C., Conrad, C., 2013. Snow-cover variability in central Asia between 2000 and 2011 derived from improved MODIS daily snow-cover products. International Journal of Remote Sensing 34, 3879–3902. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2013.767480 Dietz, A.J., Kuenzer, C., Dech, S., 2015. Global SnowPack: a new set of snow cover parameters for studying status and dynamics of the planetary snow cover extent. Remote Sensing Letters 6, 844–853. https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2015.1084551 Dietz, A.J., Wohner, C., Kuenzer, C., 2012. European Snow Cover Characteristics between 2000 and 2011 Derived from Improved MODIS Daily Snow Cover Products. Remote Sensing 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs4082432 Dietz, J.A., Conrad, C., Kuenzer, C., Gesell, G., Dech, S., 2014. Identifying Changing Snow Cover Characteristics in Central Asia between 1986 and 2014 from Remote Sensing Data. Remote Sensing 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs61212752 Rößler, S., Witt, M.S., Ikonen, J., Brown, I.A., Dietz, A.J., 2021. Remote Sensing of Snow Cover Variability and Its Influence on the Runoff of Sápmi’s Rivers. Geosciences 11, 130. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11030130

The product shows tree canopy cover loss in Germany between January 2018 and April 2021 at monthly temporal and 10 m spatial resolution. The basic principle behind this map is to compute monthly composites of the disturbance index (DI, Healey et al. 2005), a spectral index sensitive to forest disturbance, from all available Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 data with less than 80 % cloud cover. These monthly composites are then compared to a median composite of the DI for 2017, which serves as a reference. After applying a threshold to the difference image, the time series of detected losses is checked for consistency. Only losses recorded continuously in all observations of a pixel until the end of the time series are considered. The dataset does not differentiate between the drivers of the losses. It depicts areas of natural disturbances (windthrow, fire, droughts, insect infestation) as well as sanitation and salvage logging, and regular forest harvest. The full description of the method and results can be found in Thonfeld et al. (2022).

This raster dataset shows forest canopy cover loss (FCCL) in Germany at a monthly resolution from September 2017 to September 2024. It is similar to the product developed by Thonfeld et l. (2022) but was fully reprocessed and updated to reveal the most recent forest disturbance dynamics. The combination of Sentinel-2A/B and Landsat-8/9 data allows for a high temporal resolution while the pixel size of the product is 10 m. The results are clipped to the stocked area 2018 mapped by the Johann-Heinrich-von-Thünen Institute (Langner et al. 2022, https://doi.org/10.3220/DATA20221205151218). The dataset contains predominantly larger canopy openings resulting from different drivers but also larger clusters of standing deadwood. FCCL can result from abiotic (e.g. wind, fire, drought, hail) drivers, biotic (e.g. insects, funghi) drivers or a combination of both as well as from sanitary and salvage logging and planned harvest. The first version with canopy cover losses from January 2018 - April 2021 (Thonfeld et al. 2022) can be accessed here: https://geoservice.dlr.de/web/datasets/tccl.

The Sentinel-2 fractional vegetation cover (fCover) product for the Netherlands was produced as part of the NextGEOSS project at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The goal is to derive abundance maps from atmospherically corrected Sentinel-2 multispectral images for: photosynthetically active vegetation (PV); and for combined non-photosynthetically active vegetation (NPV) and bare soil (BS). The fCover product for the Netherlands has been generated by processing 10 cloud-free Sentinel-2 tiles which covered the country on 8 September 2016. The map has a spatial resolution of 60m x 60m. The Sentinel-2 scene classification layer was used to ensure that the spectral unmixing was only performed on areas of vegetation or soil. The abundance maps were made by performing MESMA unmixing on each pixel from an endmember library of PV and combined NPV + BS spectra. The purest pixels in a scene, called endmembers, were extracted using the Spatial-Spectral Endmember Extraction (SSEE) approach. The PV and NPV+BS endmembers were classified with a random forest approach and selected to form the spectral library. The spectral library was used in the µMESMA unmixing to get the PV and NPV+BS abundances.

This collection contains monthly mean surface NO2 concentrations for Germany derived from Sentinel-5P/TROPOMI data. The Sentinel-5P NO2 data is generated by DLR and provided in the framework of the mFUND-Project "S-VELD". The surface NO2 data are concentrations with the unit "μg/m3". Sentinel-5P observes Germany once per day at ~12:00 UTC and only cloud-free measurements (cloud fraction less than ~0.2) are used. The Sentinel-5P surface NO2 data within each month are averaged and gridded onto a regular UTM grid. The number of measurements used in the calculation of the averaged value are included in this collection as well.

This product shows the mean snow cover duration (SCDmean), which is updated each year and consists of the arithmetic mean for the entire time series since the hydrological year 2001. The hydrological year begins in the meteorological autumn (October 1 of the previous year in the northern hemisphere or March 1 of the reference year in the southern hemisphere) and ends with the meteorological summer (northern hemisphere: August 31 of the reference year; southern hemisphere: February 28/29 of the following year). Analogous to the annual products for snow cover duration, the entire year as well as the early season (until mid-winter) and the late season (from mid-winter) are taken into account here. The “Global SnowPack” is derived from daily, operational MODIS snow cover product for each day since February 2000. Data gaps due to polar night and cloud cover are filled in several processing steps, which provides a unique global data set characterized by its high accuracy, spatial resolution of 500 meters and continuous future expansion. It consists of the two main elements daily snow cover extent (SCE) and seasonal snow cover duration (SCD; full and for early and late season). Both parameters have been designated by the WMO as essential climate variables, the accurate determination of which is important in order to be able to record the effects of climate change. Changes in the largest part of the cryosphere in terms of area have drastic effects on people and the environment. For more information please also refer to: Dietz, A.J., Kuenzer, C., Conrad, C., 2013. Snow-cover variability in central Asia between 2000 and 2011 derived from improved MODIS daily snow-cover products. International Journal of Remote Sensing 34, 3879–3902. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2013.767480 Dietz, A.J., Kuenzer, C., Dech, S., 2015. Global SnowPack: a new set of snow cover parameters for studying status and dynamics of the planetary snow cover extent. Remote Sensing Letters 6, 844–853. https://doi.org/10.1080/2150704X.2015.1084551 Dietz, A.J., Wohner, C., Kuenzer, C., 2012. European Snow Cover Characteristics between 2000 and 2011 Derived from Improved MODIS Daily Snow Cover Products. Remote Sensing 4. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs4082432 Dietz, J.A., Conrad, C., Kuenzer, C., Gesell, G., Dech, S., 2014. Identifying Changing Snow Cover Characteristics in Central Asia between 1986 and 2014 from Remote Sensing Data. Remote Sensing 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs61212752 Rößler, S., Witt, M.S., Ikonen, J., Brown, I.A., Dietz, A.J., 2021. Remote Sensing of Snow Cover Variability and Its Influence on the Runoff of Sápmi’s Rivers. Geosciences 11, 130. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences11030130

Indian Remote Sensing satellites (IRS) are a series of Earth Observation satellites, built, launched and maintained by Indian Space Research Organisation. The IRS series provides many remote sensing services to India and international ground stations. The satellite has two panchromatic cameras that were especially designed for in flight stereo viewing.