Modeling growing season phenology in North American forests using seasonal mean vegetation indices from MODIS

The phenology of vegetation exerts an important control over the terrestrial ecosystem carbon (C) cycle. Remote sensing of key phenological phases in forests (e.g., the spring onset and autumn end of growing season) remains challenging due to noise in time series and the limited seasonal variation of canopy greenness in evergreen forests. Using 94 site-years of C flux data from four deciduous broadleaf forests (DBF) and six evergreen needleleaf …