TITLE: Phenocamera RCC daily average image composite collection from Skogaryd Stordalen, western Sweden.
SITES STATION: Skogaryd Research Catchment
TIME PERIOD: 2021-04-20 10:00:00 - 2021-12-31 14:00:00
TIME RESOLUTION: DAILY
TIME ZONE: UTC +1 
SAMPLING POINT: Skogaryd Stordalen Catchment, mast phenocam 
LATITUDE: 58.381171
LONGITUDE: 12.144872
ALTITUDE: 81.6 m a.s.l.

FILE RETRIVED FROM: https://data.fieldsites.se Link to metadata landing page is available in separate file in the downloaded zip.
DATA POLICY: SITES data is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

PARAMETERS & UNITS: Spectral Vegetation Index (fraction)

DESCRIPTION: 
Collection of phenocamera Red Chromatic Coordinate (RCC) index image composites averaged daily from quality-filtered images between 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. 
The phenocamera pointed to a clearcut of a young coniferous forest dominated by spruce trees. The spruce were cut on 2010 and replanted on 2011. In the images, some spruce saplings are visible in year 2015 and only after 2016 a spruce forest can be seen. Since 2013, a secondary species, birch (Betula pendula), is dominating the scene, especially when the leaves are on. A partial clearing of the birch was conducted on 2018. 

SENSOR DESCRIPTION:
Data acquired with Mobotix M25 RGB phenology camera, with wide field of view (FOV) angle of 60 degrees. Images stored in JPG format. 

DATA ACQUISITION
The original images were acquired with a phenology cameras on an observation mast, at a height of 5.9 m above ground, looking south-west (250 degrees) and an off-nadir angle of 59 degrees. The phenocamera acquired images from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. every hour. The phenocamera operates all year long. 
The area surveyed by the phenocamera projects a footprint on the ground, the centroid of which is approximately defined by the following coordinate (latitude, longitude in GCS WGS84, decimal degrees): 58.381171, 12.144872.  

PROCESSING METHODS:
Low quality images were filtered out manually from the original image collection. Low quality refers to images that contain sun glare, rain droplets, fog, or shadows, or represent low-light or blurry conditions. 
For phenology purposes, all images from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. were averaged per band (RGB) and pixel, daily. RCC composites were calculated from RGB daily averages and exported as 8 bit grayscale images. Digital range of RCC image layers is 0 - 255 and should be scaled down using a factor of 1/255 to get pixel values in physical range. 
RCC is defined as: DNred / (DNred + DNgreen + DNblue) (Richardson et al., 2009)

REFERENCES
Richardson, Andrew D., Koen Hufkens, Tom Milliman, Donald M. Aubrecht, Min Chen, Josh M. Gray, Miriam R. Johnston et al. "Tracking vegetation phenology across diverse North American biomes using PhenoCam imagery." Scientific data 5 (2018): 180028.

Richardson, Andrew D., Bobby H. Braswell, David Y. Hollinger, Julian P. Jenkins, and Scott V. Ollinger. "Near‐surface remote sensing of spatial and temporal variation in canopy phenology." Ecological Applications 19, no. 6 (2009): 1417-1428.








