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Introduction

ECOCLIMAP Second Generation is the latest version of ECOCLIMAP, produced at 300m-resolution (EPSG:4326) and following a new philosophy.

First, the land cover map is directly composed of the vegetation and urban types used in ISBA and TEB: each grid point of the map represents a pure type, either inland water bodies, or sea and ocean, or one vegetation type or one urban type. In other words, the notion of "cover" or ecosystem of homogeneous land cover type containing several fractions of vegetation types is abandoned.

This novelty leads to simplify the interpretation of the map inside the SURFEX code.

Secondly, the vegetation primary parameters (LAI, ground depths, height of trees, visible and near infrared soil and vegetation albedos), that are defined and averaged by cover in classic ECOCLIMAP, are now given to the PGD step through the namelist NAM_DATA_ISBA. Consequently, they can be uniform values or input maps coming from satellite data, for example.
Some default maps or values of these parameters are provided with the current version of ECOCLIMAP-SG. However, each user can use his own maps of parameters according to his specific case, he can also add new maps for parameters that are not externalized by the namelist in the default version.

To reduce the amount of memory needed to store these maps, and also to speed up their reading in SURFEX PGD, they were manually compressed following a made in-house method.

Legend of the land cover map and technical documentation

The land cover types represented in ECOCLIMAP-SG land cover map are:

1. sea and oceans
2. lakes
3. rivers
4. bare land
5. bare rock
6. permanent snow
7. boreal broadleaf deciduous
8. temperate broadleaf deciduous
9. tropical broadleaf deciduous
10. temperate broadleaf evergreen
11. tropical broadleaf evergreen
12. boreal needleleaf evergreen
13. temperate needleleaf evergreen
14. boreal needleleaf deciduous
15. shrubs
16. boreal grassland
17. temperate grassland
18. tropical grassland
19. winter C3 crops
20. summer C3 crops
21. C4 crops
22. flooded trees
23. flooded grassland
24. LCZ1: compact high-rise
25. LCZ2: compact midrise
26. LCZ3: compact low-rise
27. LCZ4: open high-rise
28. LCZ5: open midrise
29: LCZ6: open low-rise
30: LCZ7: lightweight low-rise
31: LCZ8: large low-rise
32: LCZ9: sparsely built
33: LCZ10: heavy industry

The detailed documentation of the method to build the land cover map and the maps of primary parameters is currently being drafted.

How to download ECOCLIMAP-SG

Given the amount of externalized data needed to run ECOCLIMAP-SG, they were dropped off on an external ftp site: ftp.umr-cnrm.fr

To get the data, you need to connect to this ftp site as:
user: ecoclimap
password: ecoclimap

Note that the current version, with complete dataset is ECOCLIMAP-SG V1.1 for the years 2010 and 2020
Note that the ECOCLIMAP-SG V0 old version is still provided in the same archive (see ECOSG-V0 wiki page).

In this ftp-archive, you will find the ECOCLIMAP-SG/V1.1 directory, containing the following files:

  • COVER: contains the Land Cover maps, from 1992 to 2022.
  • HT: contains the compressed maps for the Heights of Trees, from 1992 to 2022.
  • LAI:
  • The LAI_SAT_CGLS dataset for the year 2010
    => contains 36 couples of compressed files .dir/.hdr, one couple for each 10-day period
    => comes from the 2010 CLMS (ex-CGLS) LAI data at 300m-resolution
    => is provided without missing data on vegetation pixels (cover classes from 7 to 23).
    Note #1: the CLMS (ex-CGLS) LAI data used here are the same as those used for ECOCLIMAP-SG V0.
    Note #2: the LAI_SAT_CGLS dataset is also provided for the year 2020 to enable testing
  • The LAI_SAT_MODIS dataset for the year 2020
    => contains 36 couples of compressed files .dir/.hdr, one couple for each 10-day period
    => comes from the 2020 MCD15A2H.061 LAI data at 500m-resolution
    => is provided without missing data on vegetation pixels (cover classes from 7 to 23).
    Note #1: it's the first time that the MCD15A2H.061 LAI data are used in ECOCLIMAP-SG.
  • ALBEDO:
  • The ALB_SAT_CGLS_BH dataset for the year 2010
    => contains 2*36 couples of compressed files .dir/.hdr, two couples for each 10-day period (white-sky albedo over visible and near-infrared wavelengths)
    => comes from the 2010 C3S v0 (ex-CGLS) albedo data at 1km-resolution
    => is provided without missing data on soil pixels (cover classes from 4 to 33)
    => is provided without snow effect (except for cover class 6)
    Note #1: the C3S v0 (ex-CGLS) albedo data used here are the same as those used for ECOCLIMAP-SG V0.
    Note #2: white-sky albedos (BH) are typically used, but black-sky albedos (DH) are also provided.
  • The ALB_SAT_MODIS_WS dataset for the year 2020
    => contains 2*36 couples of compressed files .dir/.hdr, two couples for each 10-day period (white-sky albedo over visible and near-infrared wavelengths)
    => comes from the 2020 MCD43A3.061 and MCD43A2.061 albedo data at 500m-resolution,
    => is provided without missing data on soil pixels (cover classes from 4 to 33)
    => is provided without snow effect (except for cover class 6)
    Note #1: it's the first time that the MCD43A3.061 albedo data are used in ECOCLIMAP-SG.
    Note #2: white-sky albedos (WS) are typically used, but black-sky albedos (BS) are also provided.

Note that in those ALB_SAT datasets, no distinction is done between soil and vegetation albedo. So, to run a PGD with ECOCLIMAP-SG, you can give the same files for soil and vegetation albedos.

  • DEPTH:
Currently, we use uniform values for the root depth and the ground depth, because we don't have maps for these parameters.
For your information:

NB: All provided files need to be unzipped ("gunzip [file].gz" or "tar xzvf [file].tgz") to be used as input in SURFEX.

How to install and to use ECOCLIMAP-SG in SURFEX V81 or higher

If you want to run a PGD with ECOCLIMAP-SG in SURFEX V81 or higher, you will first need to activate, in addition to the LECOCLIMAP key, a new namelist key :

&NAM_FRAC
LECOCLIMAP = T,
LECOSG = T
/

Then, you need to link all the input files you want to use in the run directory.

After that, you will need to refer to the correct name in:

&NAM_COVER
YCOVER = 'COVER_ECOSG_2020_V1.1'
YCOVERFILETYPE = 'DIRECT'
/

And finally, you will need to update your namelist NAM_DATA_ISBA with the names of the files you use for the primary parameters.

Here an example for the year 2020:

You can notice that the type for the compressed maps of parameters is not "DIRECT" but "DIRTYP".

How to visualize a compressed input map

If you want to visualize one of the compressed input data file, you can use the uncompress tool.
A README file (included in the archive) explains how to use the tool.

How to contact us

You can send an e-mail to the following addresses:

  • surfex-support(at)meteo.fr
  • diane.tzanos(at)meteo.fr