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modis-terra-mod13a2·dataset

Vegetation greenness every 16 days, 1 km (Terra)

MODIS Terra Vegetation Indices 16-Day L3 Global 1km
biosphere ESA ESA Copernicus active
In plain English

What it measures. Like its higher-resolution cousin, this gives plant greenness through NDVI and EVI indices, but at a coarser 1-kilometer scale. Each pixel is the best low-cloud view from a 16-day period.

How it's made. Made by ESA Copernicus from NASA's MODIS sensor on Terra, with cleanest-pixel selection and index calculation as a Level-3 product.

How & where you'd use it. Good for broad-scale monitoring of vegetation health, drought, and seasonal cycles over large regions and continents.

What's measured

MODISTerraNASASatelliteGlobalVegetationNDVIEVIVegetation Index1kmMOD13A2

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2000-02-18 → ongoing
  • Spatial extent-180, -90, 180, 90

What you can do with it

  • Map vegetation, forests and biomass
  • Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
  • Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description

The MODIS Terra MOD13A2 Version 6.1 product provides Vegetation Index (VI) values at 1 km spatial resolution on a per-pixel basis. The dataset includes two primary vegetation indices: the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which maintains continuity with NDVI derived from NOAA-AVHRR observations, and the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), which improves sensitivity in regions with high vegetation biomass. The product is generated as a 16-day composite, where the algorithm selects the best available pixel from all acquisitions within the compositing period based on criteria such as low cloud contamination, low view angle, and the highest NDVI/EVI value. In addition to the vegetation index layers and two quality assurance layers, the product includes reflectance bands 1 (red), 2 (near-infrared), 3 (blue), and 7 (mid-infrared), as well as four observation layers.

Get the data

copernicus_access.py
# ESA Copernicus Data Space — open STAC API (free account)
from pystac_client import Client

cat = Client.open("https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1")
search = cat.search(
    collections=["modis-terra-mod13a2"],   # add _cog or _nc for a format variant
    bbox=(-10, 35, 30, 60),             # your area (W,S,E,N)
    datetime="2024-01-01/2024-12-31",
)
items = list(search.items())            # then read assets with rioxarray / xarray
Browsing the Copernicus STAC is open; downloading bytes needs a free Copernicus Data Space account.