Trends in annual vegetation growing season length 2000-2016, version 1, Mar. 2019

The raster file is the temporal trend in the length of the vegetation growing season. The length of growing season data set is based on the time series of the Plant Phenology Index (PPI) derived from the MODIS BRDF-Adjusted Reflectance product (MODIS MCD43 NBAR). The PPI index is optimized for efficient monitoring of vegetation phenology and is derived from the source MODIS data using radiative transfer solutions applied to the reflectance in visible-red and near infrared spectral domains. The season length indicator is based on calculating the start and end of the growing season from the annual PPI temporal curve using the TIMESAT software. Change growing season length was then calculated after fitting a linear trend and extracting the slope of the trend. Negative values refer to shortening vegetation growing season, whereas positive values refer to extending length of the vegetation growing season.