Biophysical evaluation of five land covers for land-climate interaction modeling in east Africa

A statistical measure, Q, was developed to evaluate five land cover products using monthly MODIS Leaf Area Index (LAI) product. This method spatially aggregates within-class LAI variation over a year period to a single statistic (mean Q) for the whole study area. The smaller mean Q value for a land cover product indicates the more consistent vegetation structural characteristic within class and the more appropriate land cover classification. The five land covers assessed in this paper include GLC2000, MODIS IGBP, Africover, OGE and LEAF. The evaluation was conducted at three different spatial scales cot-responding to 30x30, 50x50 and 100x100 km quadrats. We found that GLC2000 is ranked best compared to the other four land cover products for every quadrat size. For the 30x30 km quadrat size GLC2000 is significantly better than LEAF cover which is currently used in the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS). The statistic ranks MODIS IGBP better than Africover, which is better than OGE.