Global Land Observing System

Definition

An integrated system of in situ and remote sensing observation that provides information about the state of the global land surface.

Introduction

Land has a wide variety of natural features, slopes, vegetation, and soils that affect water budgets, carbon fluxes, and the reflective properties of the surface. Land is often covered by vegetation; importantly, almost 40 % of the Earth’s land surface is now under some form of management. Land use changes the characteristics of the land surface and thus can induce important local climate effects, especially through changes in albedo, roughness, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration. Precise quantification of the rate of change is important to determine whether feedback or amplification mechanisms are operating through terrestrial processes to affect the climate system.

Humans have long history of observing state of the land surface through in situ observations. This relates not only to the earliest instrumental observations of...