Release notes for Global Land product access portal
(PDF) version 2.1.11, 26 March 2015
Notes:
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The current version of the PDF portal is marked in the bottom-left corner of the portal. Make
sure this reads “Version 2.1.11-…”
After the release of the new portal version, users are required to refresh the portal in their
browser using Ctrl-F5 (as indicated on the portal and in the FAQ).
Custom orders in GeoTIFF format
Previously, Global Land products were ordered in their native format: a ZIP package containing HDF5
data files or GeoTIFF data files (for Water Bodies products only), along with a set of ancillary files
such as INSPIRE compliant (XML-format) metadata, quicklook GeoTIFF image for visual checking and
a small text file with copyright information.
In this release of the product access portal (PDF), users can customize their orders as follows:
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Change to GeoTIFF format (more formats are to be added in the next release)
Stitch the 10x10 degree tiles together, for tiled products
Spatially subset their Area of Interest, by either specifying bounding box coordinates or
providing a named area (e.g. country name in English)
Selection of data layers in the product, for multi-layer products
To place custom orders, simply follow the usual process to select a product collection (e.g. NDVI v2)
and search for products. When the portal returns the list of products, click on the “Prepare custom
order” button at the bottom.
Figure 1 New PDF portal with custom ordering feature
After clicking the button, the processing options for the order item (product) can be selected, as
illustrated in Figure 2 for FAPAR tiled products. After this, the custom order can be submitted (via
Order Now) or put into the ordering basked (Add to Cart) like regular orders.
Figure 2 Example of the configuration for Format (GeoTIFF), spatial clipping of the Area of Interest (roughly Europe), tilestitching and selection of FAPAR, FAPAR-ERR and FAPAR-QFLAG layers.
For HDF5 format, no customization is available yet. The Coordinates can still be specified, to allow
users to select only tiles that are intersecting with their Area of Interest.
Figure 3 Example of custom order with HDF5 format, allowing Coordinates to be specified. Tile-stitching and band
selection options are disabled.
For LST (and LST10) products, the processing options currently only allow the selection of the file
format (HDF5 or GeoTIFF). This will be extended in the following release.
Figure 4 Example for custom LST ordering
There is still a limitation with the fill-value or no-data value, in particular when mosaicking tiles.
While the tiles are correctly stitched and the data values can be processed, the no-data flag for sea
pixels and invalid or missing tiles can be different. Please pay attention and make sure to limit your
processing to the range of valid digital values, as described in the Product User Manual.
Figure 5 for instance shows the quicklook of an NDVI product that was created by stitching all 331
tiles together to form a global product. The colour coding shows that sea pixels (white, value 255)
have a different value from missing tiles (brown, value 254).
Figure 5 Missing tiles may get a different fill-value (no-data value) then available tiles
Consistent Product ID values
The Product ID column of the search results is now more consistent between products and
collections. It reflects the product filename minus the g2_BIOPAR prefix and .zip filename extension.
Hence, the Product ID reflects the type of product (e.g. LAI), the nominal date (YYYYMMDDhhmm
format), the sensor (PROBAV) and the version. The latter was specifically requested by users.
This change is also reflected in the foldernames on the FTP site where ordered products can be
downloaded from.
Direct HTTP allows filtering tile, continental and global products
As described in the manual for the Datapool or Direct HTTP access, the “cov” URL query parameter
was added to allow filtering Tiles, Continents or Global products, in case the product type supports
this. For instance, the FAPAR v1 products are provided as tiles and continents and can hence be
queried with cov=tile and cov=cont filters. Omitting the “cov” parameter returns all available
coverages (tiles, continents, global).
Updated look-and-feel
The banner and some styling was changed to reflect the updated Global Land main website.