SPATIAL-TEMPORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH (AOD) DERIVED FROM LONGTERM (1980–2018) MERRA-2 OVER GUANGDONG

We developed the first time-mapped, continental-scale gridded dataset of monthly leaf area index (LAI) in three leaf age cohorts (i.e., young, mature, and old) from 2001–2018 data (referred to as Lad-LAI). The seasonality of three LAI cohorts from the new Lad-LAI product agrees well at eight sites with very fine-scale collections of monthly LAI. The proposed satellite-based approaches can provide references for mapping finer spatiotemporal-resolution LAI products with different leaf age cohorts.