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Full catalog/MOD09
MOD09·v6.1·dataset

True surface color, single pass (Terra)

MODIS/Terra Atmospherically Corrected Surface Reflectance 5-Min L2 Swath 250m, 500m, 1km
land NASA LAADS Level 2 active HDF-EOS
In plain English

What it measures. The true color of the land surface in seven wavelengths of light, as it would look if there were no air in the way. It strips out the haze, dust, and scattering the atmosphere adds.

How it's made. Produced from a single pass of the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite, taking the raw measured light and mathematically removing atmospheric effects to estimate ground-level reflectance.

How & where you'd use it. Mainly a building-block input: it feeds higher-level products like vegetation greenness, snow and ice maps, and fire detection, so most people use it indirectly rather than on its own.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SURFACE RADIATIVE PROPERTIES › REFLECTANCE

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-24 → ongoing
  • Measured byTerra (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90
  • FormatsHDF-EOS
  • StatusACTIVE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

The MODIS/Terra Atmospherically Corrected Surface Reflectance 5-Min L2 Swath 250m, 500m, 1km (MOD09) product is computed from the MODIS Level 1B land bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 (centered at 648 nm, 858 nm, 470 nm, 555 nm, 1240 nm, 1640 nm, and 2130 nm, respectively). The product is an estimate of the surface spectral reflectance for each band as it would have been measured at ground level if there were no atmospheric scattering or absorption. The surface-reflectance product is the input for product generation for several land products: vegetation Indices (VIs), Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF), thermal anomaly, snow/ice, and Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation/Leaf Area Index (FPAR/LAI).

Get the data

mod09_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="MOD09",
    version="6.1",
    bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9),  # your area (W,S,E,N)
    temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"),       # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results)   # stream straight from LAADS
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.