Output Format

Data organization

Depending on parameterization (DO_REPROJ / DO_TILE), the output data are organized according to their original spatial reference system (WRS-2 frames / MGRS zones) or are provided in a gridded data structure as ARD (strongly recommended!), i.e. data cubes. The tiles (or original reference system) manifest as directories in the file system, and the images are stored within. The user can choose to keep the original projection (UTM) or to reproject all data to one consistent projection (strictly recommended for ARD!).

Warning

If you are not using the datacube options, i.e. DO_REPROJ = FALSE or DO_TILE = FALSE, you are running into a dead end for FORCE. In this case, the data cannot be further processed or analysed with any Higher Level functionality.

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. The file datacube-definition.prj is a text file in tag and value notation that contains the (1) projection as WKT string, (2) origin of the tile system as geographic Longitude, (3) origin of the tile system as geographic Latitude, (4) origin of the tile system as projected X-coordinate, (5) origin of the tile system as projected Y-coordinate, and the (6-7) sizes of the tiles in projection units.

Warning

Do not modify or delete any of these files!

An example datacube definition file looks like this:

PROJECTION = PROJCS["ETRS89-extended/LAEAEurope",GEOGCS["ETRS89",DATUM["European_Terrestrial_Reference_System_1989",SPHEROID["GRS1980",6378137,298.257222101,AUTHORITY["EPSG","7019"]],TOWGS84[0,0,0,0,0,0,0],AUTHORITY["EPSG","6258"]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","4258"]],PROJECTION["Lambert_Azimuthal_Equal_Area"],PARAMETER["latitude_of_center",52],PARAMETER["longitude_of_center",10],PARAMETER["false_easting",4321000],PARAMETER["false_northing",3210000],UNIT["metre",1,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","3035"]]
ORIGIN_GEO_X = -25.000000
ORIGIN_GEO_Y = 60.000000
ORIGIN_MAP_X = 2456026.363042
ORIGIN_MAP_Y = 4574919.607965
TILE_SIZE_X = 30000.000000
TILE_SIZE_Y = 30000.000000

FORCE versions older than 3.8.01-dev:::2025-09-17_14:04:58 used a different format for the datacube definition file. Backward compatibility is ensured, i.e. existing data cubes do not need to be converted.

However, older software versions will not be able to read data cubes created with the new format!

An example of the old format looks like this:

PROJCS["ETRS89 / LAEA Europe",GEOGCS["ETRS89",DATUM["European_Terrestrial_Reference_System_1989",SPHEROID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,AUTHORITY["EPSG","7019"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","6258"]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","4258"]],PROJECTION["Lambert_Azimuthal_Equal_Area"],PARAMETER["latitude_of_center",52],PARAMETER["longitude_of_center",10],PARAMETER["false_easting",4321000],PARAMETER["false_northing",3210000],UNIT["metre",1,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","3035"]]
-25.000000
60.000000
2456026.363042
4574919.607965
30000.000000
3000.000000

Naming convention

Following 29-digit naming convention is applied to all output files:

Example filename: 20160823_LEVEL2_SEN2A_BOA.tif

Digits

Description

1-8

Acquisition date as YYYYMMDD

10-15

Product Level

17-21

Sensor ID

LND04

Landsat 4 Thematic Mapper

LND05

Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper

LND07

Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper

LND08

Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager

LND09

Landsat 9 Operational Land Imager

SEN2A

Sentinel-2A MultiSpectral Instrument

SEN2B

Sentinel-2B MultiSpectral Instrument

SEN2C

Sentinel-2C MultiSpectral Instrument

23-25

Product Type

BOA

Bottom-of-Atmosphere Reflectance

TOA

Top-of-Atmosphere Reflectance

QAI

Quality Assurance Information

AOD

Aerosol Optical Depth

DST

Cloud / Cloud shadow /Snow distance

WVP

Water vapor

VZN

View zenith

HOT

Haze Optimized Transformation

27-29

File extension

tif

image data in compressed GeoTiff format

jpg

quicklooks

File format

The images are provided with signed 16bit datatype in one of the following preconfigured formats:

DRIVER = COG
EXTENSION = tif
COMPRESS = ZSTD
PREDICTOR = YES
INTERLEAVE = TILE
TILED = YES
BLOCKSIZE = 256
BIGTIFF = YES
OVERVIEW_RESAMPLING = AVERAGE

DRIVER = GTiff
EXTENSION = tif
COMPRESS = ZSTD
PREDICTOR = 2
INTERLEAVE = BAND
BIGTIFF = YES
TILED = YES
BLOCKXSIZE = 256
BLOCKYSIZE = 256

DRIVER = ENVI
EXTENSION = dat

COG is the default and recommended format. Users may also use a custom format by providing GDAL configuration options in the same format as shown above.

FORCE versions older than 3.8.01-dev:::2025-09-17_14:04:58 used a different GeoTiff configuration. If you want to create GeoTiff files with the old configuration, you may use following settings in a custom format. Note that you need to adapt the block sizes to your tile size, such that you have BLOCKXSIZE being the tile size in x direction and BLOCKYSIZE being a divisor of the tile size in y direction, usually 10 blocks.

DRIVER = GTiff
EXTENSION = tif
COMPRESS = LZW
PREDICTOR = 2
INTERLEAVE = BAND
BIGTIFF = YES
BLOCKXSIZE = 30000
BLOCKYSIZE = 3000

Metadata

Metadata are written to all output products. 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

Reflectance data (BOA / TOA) and Quality Assurance Information (QAI) are standard output and cannot be disabled. All other products are optional.

  • Reflectance

    Bottom-of-Atmosphere (BOA) reflectance is standard output if atmospheric correction is used. Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) reflectance is standard output if atmospheric correction is not used. The scale is 10000, and nodata value is -9999. BOA / TOA data contain multiple bands, which represent wavelengths, see metadata and following tables). All bands are provided at the same spatial resolution (see Parameter file). Bands intended for atmospheric characterization are not output (e.g. ultra-blue, water vapor or cirrus bands). Following tables summarize the output bands for each sensor.

    • Landsat 4-5 Thematic Mapper (TM):

      USGS L1 band

      Wavelength name

      Wavelength in µm

      Resolution in m

      FORCE L2 band

      1

      Blue

      0.45-0.52

      30

      1

      2

      Green

      0.52-0.60

      30

      2

      3

      Red

      0.63-0.69

      30

      3

      4

      Near Infrared

      0.76-0.90

      30

      4

      5

      Shortwave Infrared 1

      1.55-1.75

      30

      5

      6

      Thermal Infrared

      10.40-12.50

      30 (120 1)

      / 2

      7

      Shortwave Infrared 2

      2.08-2.35

      30

      6
      1 Band is acquired at 120m resolution, but USGS products are resampled and provided at 30m.
      2 Thermal band is used internally for cloud / cloud shadow detection, but not output.

    • Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+):

      USGS L1 band

      Wavelength name

      Wavelength in µm

      Resolution in m

      FORCE L2 band

      1

      Blue

      0.45-0.52

      30

      1

      2

      Green

      0.52-0.60

      30

      2

      3

      Red

      0.63-0.69

      30

      3

      4

      Near Infrared

      0.77-0.90

      30

      4

      5

      Shortwave Infrared 1

      1.55-1.75

      30

      5

      6

      Thermal Infrared

      10.40-12.50

      30 (60 1)

      / 2

      7

      Shortwave Infrared 2

      2.09-2.35

      30

      6

      8

      Panchromatic

      0.52-0.90

      15

      /
      1 Band is acquired at 60m resolution, but USGS products are resampled and provided at 30m.
      2 Thermal band is used internally for cloud / cloud shadow detection, but not output.

    • Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) / Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS):

      USGS L1 band

      Wavelength name

      Wavelength in µm

      Resolution in m

      FORCE L2 band

      1

      Ultra-Blue

      0.435-0.451

      30

      / 2

      2

      Blue

      0.452-0.512

      30

      1

      3

      Green

      0.533-0.590

      30

      2

      4

      Red

      0.636-0.673

      30

      3

      5

      Near Infrared

      0.851-0.879

      30

      4

      6

      Shortwave Infrared 1

      1.566-1.651

      30

      5

      7

      Shortwave Infrared 2

      2.107-2.294

      30

      6

      8

      Panchromatic

      0.503-0.676

      15

      /

      9

      Cirrus

      1.363-1.384

      30

      / 3

      10

      Thermal Infrared 1

      10.60-11.19

      30 (100 1)

      / 4

      11

      Thermal Infrared 2

      11.50-12.51

      30 (100 1)

      /
      1 Bands are acquired at 100m resolution, but USGS products are resampled and provided at 30m.
      2 Ultra-Blue band is used internally for aerosol retrieval, but not output.
      3 Cirrus band is used internally for cirrus cloud detection, but not output.
      4 Thermal band is used internally for cloud / cloud shadow detection, but not output.

    • Sentinel-2 A/B MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI):

      ESA L1 band

      Wavelength name

      Wavelength in µm

      Resolution in m

      FORCE L2 band

      1

      Ultra-Blue

      0.430-0.457

      60

      / 1

      2

      Blue

      0.440-0.538

      10

      1

      3

      Green

      0.537-0.582

      10

      2

      4

      Red

      0.646-0.684

      10

      3

      5

      Red Edge 1

      0.694-0.713

      20

      4

      6

      Red Edge 2

      0.731-0.749

      20

      5

      7

      Red Edge 3

      0.769-0.797

      20

      6

      8

      Broad Near Infrared

      0.760-0.908

      10

      7

      8A

      Near Infrared

      0.848-0.881

      20

      8

      9

      Water Vapor

      0.932-0.958

      60

      / 2

      10

      Cirrus

      1.337-1.412

      60

      / 3

      11

      Shortwave Infrared 1

      1.539-1.682

      20

      9

      12

      Shortwave Infrared 2

      2.078-2.320

      20

      10
      1 Ultra-Blue band is used internally for aerosol retrieval, but not output.
      2 Water vapor band is used internally for water vapor retrieval, but not output.
      3 Cirrus band is used internally for cirrus cloud detection, but not output.

  • Quality Assurance Information

    This product contains all per-pixel quality information, including the cloud masks.

    See also

    Check out this tutorial, which explains what quality bits are, how quality bits are implemented in FORCE, how to visualize them, and how to deal with them in Higher Level Processing..

    QAI are provided bit-wise for each pixel, thus the 16-bit integers have to be parsed using following conventions. As an example, integer 28672 would be a poorly illuminated, sloped pixel where water vapor could not have been estimated.

    Bit:

    15

    14

    13

    12

    11

    10

    9

    8

    7

    6

    5

    4

    3

    2

    1

    0

    Flag:

    0

    1

    1

    1

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    ∑ = 28672

    Bit No.

    Parameter name

    Bit comb.

    Integer

    State

    0

    Valid data

    0

    0

    valid

    1

    1

    no data

    1-2

    Cloud state

    00

    0

    clear

    01

    1

    less confident cloud (i.e., buffered cloud)

    10

    2

    confident, opaque cloud

    11

    3

    cirrus

    3

    Cloud shadow flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes

    4

    Snow flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes

    5

    Water flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes

    6-7

    Aerosol state

    00

    0

    estimated (best quality)

    01

    1

    interpolated (mid quality)

    10

    2

    high (aerosol optical depth > 0.6, use with caution)

    11

    3

    fill (global fallback, low quality)

    8

    Subzero flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes (use with caution)

    9

    Saturation flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes (use with caution)

    10

    High sun zenith flag

    0

    0

    no

    1

    1

    yes (sun elevation < 15°, use with caution)

    11-12

    Illumination state

    00

    0

    good (incidence angle < 55°, best quality for top. correction)

    01

    1

    medium (incidence angle 55°-80°, good quality for top. correction)

    10

    2

    poor (incidence angle > 80°, low quality for top. correction)

    11

    3

    shadow (incidence angle > 90°, no top. correction applied)

    13

    Slope flag

    0

    0

    no (cosine correction applied)

    1

    1

    yes (enhanced C-correction applied)

    14

    Water vapor flag

    0

    0

    measured (best quality, only Sentinel-2)

    1

    1

    fill (scene average, only Sentinel-2)

    15

    Empty

    0

    0

    TBD

    • Nodata values are values where nothing was observed, where auxiliary data was not given (e.g. nodata in DEM), or where data is substantially corrupt (e.g. impulse noise, or when the surface reflectance estimate is > 2.0 or < -1.0)

    • Clouds are given in three categories, i.e. opaque clouds (confident cloud), buffered clouds (300m; less confident cloud), and cirrus clouds.

    • Cloud shadows are detected on the basis of the cloud layer. If a cloud is missed, the cloud shadow is missed, too. If a false positive cloud is detected, false positive cloud shadows follow.

    • Aerosol Optical Depth is estimated for fairly coarse grid cells. If there is no valid AOD estimation in any cell, values are interpolated. If there is no valid AOD estimation for the complete image, a fill value is assigned (AOD is guessed). If AOD @550nm is higher than 0.6, it is flagged as high aerosol; this is not necessarily critical, but should be used with caution (see subzero flag).

    • If the surface reflectance estimate in any band is < 0, the subzero flag is set. This can point to overestimation of AOD.

    • If DNs were saturated, or if the surface reflectance estimate in any band is > 1, the saturation flag is set.

    • If sun elevation is smaller than 15°, the high sun zenith flag is set. Use this data with caution, radiative transfer computations might be out of specification.

    • The illumination state is related to the quality of the topographic correction. If the incidence angle is smaller than 55°, quality is best. If the incidence angle is larger than 80°, the quality of the topographic correction is low, and data artefacts are possible. If the area is not illuminated at all, no topographic correction is done (values are the same as without topographic correction).

    • The slope flag indicates whether a simple cosine correction (slope ≤ 2°) was used for topographic correction, or if the enhanced C-correction was used (slope > 2°).

    • The water vapor flag indicates whether water vapor was estimated, or if the scene average was used to fill. Water vapor is not estimated over water and cloud shadow pixels. This flag only applies to Sentinel-2 images.

  • Aerosol Optical Depth

    The Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) product is optional output. It contains the AOD of the green band (~550 nm). The scale is 1000, and nodata value is -9999. This product is not used by any of the higher-level FORCE modules.

  • Cloud / cloud shadow / snow distance

    The Cloud / cloud shadow / snow distance (CLD) product is optional output. The cloud distance gives the distance to the next opaque cloud, buffered cloud, cirrus cloud, cloud shadow or snow. The unit is in projection units (commonlyeters), and nodata value is -9999. This product can be used in Level 3 Compositing to generate Best Available Pixel (BAP) composites.

    Note

    This is not the actual cloud mask! For cloud masks and quality screening, rather use the QAI product.

  • Water vapor

    The Water vapor (WVP) product is optional output. It contains the atmospheric water vapor (as derived from the Sentinel-2 data on pixel level, or as ingested with the water vapor database for Landsat). The scale is 1000, and nodata value is -9999. This product is not used by any of the higher-level FORCE modules.

  • View zenith

    The View zenith (VZN) product is optional output. It contains the view zenith (the average view zenith for Sentinel-2, and an approximated view zenith for Landsat). The scale is 100, and nodata value is -9999. This product can be used in Level 3 Compositing to generate Best Available Pixel (BAP) composites.

  • Haze Optimized Transformation

    The Haze Optimized Transformation (HOT) product is optional output. It contains the HOT index, which is computed on TOA reflectance (and therefore cannot be computed on Level 2 ARD). The HOT is useful to avoid hazy and residual cloud contamination. The scale is 10000, and nodata value is -9999. This product can be used in Level 3 Compositing to generate Best Available Pixel (BAP) composites.

Logfile

This part needs updating

A logfile is created by force-level2 in the output directory. Following 29-digit naming convention is applied: FORCE-L2PS_20170712040001.log Digits 1-10 Processing module Digits 12-25 Processing time (start time) as YYYYMMDDHHMMSS Digits 27-29 File extension

Typical entries look like this: LC08_L1TP_195023_20180110_20180119_01_T1: sc: 0.10%. cc: 89.59%. AOD: 0.2863. # of targets: 0/327. 4 product(s) written. Success! Processing time: 32 mins 37 secs LC08_L1TP_195023_20170328_20170414_01_T1: sc: 0.00%. cc: 2.56%. AOD: 0.0984. # of targets: 394/6097. 6 product(s) written. Success! Processing time: 19 mins 03 secs LC08_L1TP_195023_20170312_20170317_01_T1: sc: 0.29%. cc: 91.85%. Skip. Processing time: 13 mins 22 secs

The first entry indicates the image ID, followed by overall snow and cloud cover, aerosol optical depth @ 550 nm (scene average), the number of dark targets for retrieving aerosol optical depth (over water/vegetation), the number of products written (number of tiles, this is dependent on tile cloud cover, and FILE_TILE), and a supportive success indication. In the case the overall cloud coverage is higher than allowed, the image is skipped. The processing time (real time) is appended at the end.

Provenance

A data provenance table is generated per processing day. The csv table stores the information necessary to trace which output product was produced by which input product(s), and whether the file was newly created, or data were merged into it.

Quicklooks

If OUTPUT_OVV = TRUE, small jpeg quicklooks images are generated, The quicklooks are fixed-stretch RGB images with overlays of key quality indicators:

quality indicator

color

cirrus

red

opaque cloud

pink

cloud shadow

cyan

snow

yellow

saturated pixels

orange

subzero reflectance

greenish