Output Format

Data organization

The data are organized in a gridded data structure, i.e. data cubes. The tiles manifest as directories in the file system, and the images are stored within.

See also

Check out this tutorial, which explains what a datacube is, how it is parameterized, how you can find a POI, how to visualize the tiling grid, and how to conveniently display cubed data.

Data Cube definition

The spatial data cube definition is appended to each data cube, i.e. to each directory containing tiled datasets, see Data Cube definition.

Naming convention

Following 42 to 46-digit naming convention is applied to all output files:

Example filename: 1984-2020_182-274_HL_TSA_LNDLG_TCG_STM.tif

Table 1: Naming convention

Digits	Description
1–9	Temporal range for the years as YYYY–YYYY
11-17	Temporal range for the DOY as DDD–DDD
19-20	Product Level
22-24	Submodule
26-30	Sensor ID
	LNDLG	Landsat legacy bands
	SEN2L	Sentinel-2 land bands
	SEN2H	Sentinel-2 high-res bands
	R-G-B	Visible bands
	VVVHP	VV/VH Dual Polarized
32–34	Index Short Name
	BLU	Blue band
	GRN	Green band
	RED	Red band
	NIR	Near Infrared band
	SW1	Shortwave Infrared band 1
	SW2	Shortwave Infrared band 2
	RE1	Red Edge band 1
	RE2	Red Edge band 2
	RE3	Red Edge band 3
	BNR	Broad Near Infrared band
	NDV	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
	EVI	Enhanced Vegetation Index
	NBR	Normalized Burn Ratio
	ARV	Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index
	SAV	Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index
	SRV	Soil and Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index
	TCB	Tasseled Cap Brightness
	TCG	Tasseled Cap Greenness
	TCW	Tasseled Cap Wetness
	TCD	Tasseled Cap Disturbance Index (without rescaling)
	NDB	Normalized Difference Building Index
	NDW	Normalized Difference Water Index
	MNW	modified Normalized Difference Water Index
	NDS	Normalized Difference Snow Index
	SMA	Spectral Mixture Analysis abundance
	BVV	VV Polarized band
	BVH	VH Polarized band
	ND1	Normalized Difference Red Edge Index 1
	ND2	Normalized Difference Red Edge Index 2
	CRE	Chlorophyll Index Red Edge
	NR1	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 1
NR2	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 2
NR3	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 3
N1N	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 1 narrow
N2N	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 2 narrow
N3N	Normalized Difference Vegetation Index red edge 3 narrow
MRE	Modified Simple Ratio red edge
MRN	Modified Simple Ratio red edge narrow
CCI	Chlorophyll Carotenoid Index
36-38	Product Type
	TSS	Time Series Stack
	TSI	Time Series Interpolation
	RMS	RMSE Time Series of SMA
	STM	Spectral Temporal Metrics
	FBX	Fold-by-X Time Series (replace X with Table 2)
	TRX	Trend Analysis on Folds (replace X with Table 2)
	CAX	Extended CAT Analysis on Folds (replace X with Table 2)
	SPL	Spline fitted Time Series
36-42	Product Type: Phenometrics (replace XXX with Table 3)
	XXX-LSP	Phenometrics
	XXX-TRP	Trend Analysis on Phenometrics
	XXX-CAP	Extended CAT Analysis on Phenometrics
36-42	Product Type: Polarmetrics (replace XXX with Table 3)
	XXX-POL	Polarmetrics
	XXX-TRO	Trend Analysis on Polarmetrics
	XXX-CAO	Extended CAT Analysis on Polarmetrics
40-42 / 44-46	File extension
	tif	image data in compressed GeoTiff format
	dat	image data in flat binary ENVI format
	hdr	metadata for ENVI format

Folding

Table 2: Folding tags

Letter	Description
Y	Fold by Year
Q	Fold by Quarter
M	Fold by Month
W	Fold by Week
D	Fold by Day

Phenology

Table 3: Phenology name tags

Tag	Description	Polar	SPLITS
DEM	Date of Early Minimum	X	X
DSS	Date of Start of Season	X	X
DRI	Date of Rising Inflection		X
DPS	Date of Peak of Season	X	X
DMS	Date of Mid of Season	X
DFI	Date of Falling Inflection		X
DES	Date of End of Season	X	X
DLM	Date of Late Minimum	X	X
DEV	Date of Early Average Vector	X
DAV	Date of Average Vector	X
DLV	Date of Late Average Vector	X
DPY	Date of Start of Phenological Year	X
DPV	delta Date of adaptive Start of Phenological Year	X
LTS	Length of Total Season	X	X
LGS	Length of Green Season	X	X
LGV	Length of between early/late vectors	X
VEM	Value of Early Minimum	X	X
VSS	Value of Start of Season	X	X
VRI	Value of Rising Inflection		X
VPS	Value of Peak of Season	X	X
VMS	Value of Mid of Season	X
VFI	Value of Falling Inflection		X
VES	Value of End of Season	X	X
VLM	Value of Late Minimum	X	X
VEV	Value of Early Average Vector	X
VAV	Value of Average Vector	X
VLV	Value of Late Average Vector	X
VBL	Value of Base Level	X	X
VSA	Value of Seasonal Amplitude	X	X
VGA	Value of Green Amplitude	X
VPA	Value of Peak Amplitude	X
VGM	Value of Green Mean	X
VGV	Value of Green Variability	X
IST	Integral of Total Season	X	X
IBL	Integral of Base Level	X	X
IBT	Integral of Base+Total	X	X
IGS	Integral of Green Season	X	X
IRR	Integral of Rising Rate	X
IFR	Integral of Falling Rate	X
RAR	Rate of Average Rising	X	X
RAF	Rate of Average Falling	X	X
RMR	Rate of Maximum Rising	X	X
RMF	Rate of Maximum Falling	X	X

File format

The images are provided with signed 16bit datatype and band sequential (BSQ) interleaving in one of the following formats:

• GeoTiff

  This is the recommended output option. Images are compressed GeoTiff images using LZW compression with horizontal differencing. The images are generated with internal blocks for partial image access. These blocks are strips that are as wide as the TILE_SIZE and as high as the BLOCK_SIZE.

• ENVI Standard format

  This produces flat binary images without any compression. This option might seem tempting as there is no overhead in cracking the compression when reading these data. However, the transfer of the larger data volume from disc to CPU often takes longer than cracking the compression. Therefore, we recommend to use the GeoTiff option.

Metadata

Metadata are written to all output products. For ENVI format, the metadata are written to the ENVI header (.hdr extension). For GeoTiff format, the metadata are written into the GeoTiff file. If the metadata is larger than allowed by the GeoTiff driver, the excess metadata will be written to an “auxiliary metadata” file with .aux.xml extension. FORCE-specific metadata will be written to the FORCE domain, and thus are probably not visible unless the FORCE domain (or all domains) are specifically printed:

gdalinfo -mdd all 20160823_LEVEL2_SEN2A_BOA.tif

Product type

• Time Series Time Series products have as many bands as there are available or requested time steps. If no temporal subset was specified: the TSS product contains one band per available acquisition (this may vary between the tiles), the RMS product contains one band per available acquisition (this may vary between the tiles), the TSI product contains one band per interpolation step, the FBY product contains one band per year (do not overdo YEAR_MIN/MAX, this will give many useless bands), the FBM product contains one band per month (up to 12, depends on MONTH_MIN/MAX and DOY_MIN/MAX), the FBW contains one band per week (up to 52, depends on MONTH_MIN/MAX and DOY_MIN/MAX), the FBD product contains one band per DOY (up to 365, depends on MONTH_MIN/MAX and DOY_MIN/MAX), the 26 LSP products contain one band per year (do not overdo YEAR_MIN/MAX, this will give many useless bands).

Trend Analysis

The Trend Analysis products contains trend parameters:

Band	Description
1	Average
2	Intercept
3	Trend
4	relative change
5	absolute change
6	R-squared
7	Significance (-1, 0, 1)
8	Root Mean Squared Error
9	Mean Absolute Error
10	Maximum Absolute Residual
11	Number of used observations
12	Length of time series

Change and Trend

The Change, Aftereffect, Trend (CAT) product (following [Hird et al. 2016](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7094220) contains extended change and trend parameters. CAT detects one change per time series, splits the time series into three parts, and derives trend parameters for the three parts:

Band	Description
1	Magnitude of change
2	Relative change
3	Time of change
4 to 15	Trend parameters for complete time series (see Trend product)
16 to 27	Trend parameters for time series before change (see Trend product)
28 to 39	Trend parameters for time series after change (see Trend product)