MOD-LSP: MODIS-Based Parameters for Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) Model over the Continental US, Mexico, and Southern Canada

The MOD-LSP project contains MODIS-based land and surface (soil and vegetation) parameters for the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model (Liang et al., 1994), release 5.0 and later (Hamman et al., 2018). The MOD-LSP spatial domain covers the continental United States, Mexico, and southern Canada. This spatial domain and 0.625° (6 km) grid resolution are compatible with the gridded daily meteorological forcings of (Livneh et al. 2015) ("L2015" hereafter), which can be disaggregated to hourly time step via the MetSim tool (Bennett et al. 2018) using domain files archived on Zenodo (Bohn et al. 2018). These domain files also can accompany the MOD-LSP parameter files as inputs to VIC simulations.

These parameters have two main purposes: (1) to improve upon previous widely-used parameters over the region (e.g., L2015) with updated, higher-resolution land cover maps and spatially explicit observations of surface properties; and (2) to expand from a single parameter set corresponding to one point in time to a series of parameter sets that account for temporal variability at seasonal to decadal scales.

A detailed description of methods, the data sources and purposes of different VIC parameter sets within MOD-LSP, and how to use them with VIC, can be found in the MOD-LSP User Guide.pdf, included here. The scripts that were used to create the MOD-LSP parameters are archived on GitHub (https://github.com/tbohn/VIC_Landcover_MODIS_NLCD_INEGI/releases/tag/v1.1) (Bohn 2019).

If you wish to present or publish results that use these parameter sets, please cite the following paper (this record will be updated when the paper is published):

Bohn, T. J., and E. R. Vivoni, 2019: Improvements to land surface parameters for the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) hydrologic model over the Continental US, Mexico, and Southern Canada. Nat. Sci. Data, (in prep).

In addition, if you use the domain files associated with the PITRI precipitation disaggregation to accompany the MOD-LSP parameter files in VIC simulations, please cite the following paper:

Bohn, T. J., K. M. Whitney, G. Mascaro, and E. R. Vivoni, 2019: A deterministic approach for approximating the diurnal cycle of precipitation for use in large-scale hydrological modeling. J. Hydrometeorol., 20, 297–317, doi:10.1175/JHM-D-18-0203.1.

Contents:

• MOD-LSP User Guide.pdf - Explains how parameters were generated and how to set up the files for input in VIC simulations.
• global_param.template - Template for global_parameter file, which lists the locations of the other input files and sets various simulation options. The template contains placeholders for some filenames and simulation options, which must be replaced with real values by the user.
• params.$DOMAIN.L2015.nc - VIC-5 compliant NetCDF parameter files with values taken from the L2015 project for domain $DOMAIN (which is one of "CONUS_MX" or "USMX").
• params.CONUS_MX.MOD_IGBP.mode.2000_2016.nc - VIC-5 compliant NetCDF parameter file over the CONUS_MX domain, with land cover fractions taken from the MODIS MCD12Q1.006 product and an annual cycle of land surface properties (LAI, Fcanopy, albedo) derived from the climatological mean of MODIS observations over the period 2000-2016.
• params.USMX.NLCD_INEGI.$LCID.2000_2016.nc - VIC-5 compliant NetCDF parameter file over the USMX domain, with land cover fractions taken from the NLCD_INEGI dataset, from year = $LCID, and an annual cycle of land surface properties (LAI, Fcanopy, albedo) derived from the climatological mean of MODIS observations over the period 2000-2016.
• params.USMX.NLCD_INEGI.$LCID.$YYYY_$YYYY.nc - VIC-5 compliant NetCDF parameter file over the USMX domain, with land cover fractions taken from the NLCD_INEGI dataset, from year = $LCID, and an annual cycle of land surface properties (LAI, Fcanopy, albedo) derived from the MODIS observations from a single year $YYYY.
• veg_hist.$DOMAIN.$LCTYPE.$LCID.2000_2016.nc - timeseries of monthly land surface properties (LAI, Fcanopy, albedo) from MODIS observations spanning years 2000-2016, over domain $DOMAIN, aggregated over land cover classification $LCTYPE from year $LCID.