1. Introduction#

1.1 Context#

BIOMASS is ESA’s 7th Earth Explorer mission. The purpose of the BIOMASS is to reduce the uncertainty in the worldwide spatial distribution and dynamics of forest biomass in order to improve current assessments and future projections of the global carbon cycle. This objective will be achieved by the implementation of a P-band SAR mission, providing global maps of forest biomass stocks, forest disturbance and growth.

The BIOMASS mission will also provide 3D views of forests through the “tomographic” phase and will also support additional science needs arising from the opportunity to explore the Earth for the first time with a P-band SAR system from space offering the possibility to “see” below the vegetated areas and in beneath bare soil or icy regions.

To achieve its challenging objectives, the BIOMASS mission requires a specific data processing strategy that combines different technologies at different processing level in order to generate the final Above Ground Biomass global map.

1.2 Scope of the document#

The purpose of this document is to provide the “Forest Height Products Format Specification” for the BIOMASS Processing Suite (BPS) project.

This document is organized as follows:

Section 2: Brief introduction about BPS and Forest Height products;
Section 3: Overview of L2a products format;
Section 4: Detailed description of L2a products format specifications;
Section 5: Overview of L2b products format;
Section 6: Detailed description of L2b products format specifications.
Section 7: Appendix containing xml primitive product types description.

1.3 Acronyms#

Acronyms

Acronym	Description
ADS	Annotation Data Set
AGB	Above Ground Biomass
ARESYS	Advanced Remote Sensing and Systems
BPS	BIOMASS Processing Suite
CFM	Computed Forest Mask (by Forest Disturbance L2 processor)
COG	Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF
COM	Commissioning Phase
DEM	Digital Elevation Model
DGG	Discrete Global Grid
DSR	Data Set Record
FD	Forest Disturbance
FH	Forest height
FNF	Forest/Non-Forest Mask
GC	Global Cycle
INT	Interferometric Phase
L1c	Level-1c product
L2a	Level-2a product
L2b	Level-2b product
LCM	Land Cover Map (ESA CCI/C3S)
LERC	Limited Error Raster Compression
LUT	Look-Up Tables
MDS	Measurement Data Set
MPH	Main Product Header
NetCDF	Network Common Data Form
OGC	Open Geospatial Consortium
RDS	Representation Data Set
SAR	Synthetic Aperture Radar
STA	Stack interferometric product
STAC	Spatio Temporal Asset Catalogs
TCH	Top Canopy Height
TBD	To Be Defined
TOM	Tomographic Phase

1.4 Applicable documents#

Code	Document
`[AD1]`	[`L1_PFD`] `BIO-ESA-EOPG-EEGS-TN-0044`, BIOMASS L1 Product Format Definition, I/R 2/0
`[AD2]`	[`PROD_NAMING`] `BIO-ESA-EOPG-EEGS-TN-0050`, BIOMASS Products Naming Convention, I/R 2/3
`[AD3]`	[MPH] `BIO-ESA-EOPG-EEGS-TN-0051`, BIOMASS Products - Main Product Header Definition, I/R 2/3
`[AD4]`	[`AUX_FMT`] `BIO-ESA-EOPG-EEGS-TN-0054`, BIOMASS Auxiliary Product Format Definition, I/R 2/1/1
`[AD5]`	`PE-ID-ESA-GS-584`, Earth Observation Mission Software File Format Specification, I/R 1/4
`[AD6]`	BIOMASS Production Model, `BIO-ESA-EOPG-EEGS-TN-0046`, issue 3.5
`[AD7]`	BIO-BPS-TN-PRODMOD, BIOMASS Production Model Technical Note, I/R 1/2/2
`[AD8]`	BIOMASS L2 FD ATBD, I/R, 2/1/4
`[AD9]`	BIOMASS L2 FH ATBD, I/R, 2/1/4

1.5 Reference documents#

Code	Document
`[RD1]`	Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF format, https://www.cogeo.org/
`[RD2]`	GDAL library, https://gdal.org/
`[RD3]`	GDAL library Wiki - Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF section, https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/CloudOptimizedGeoTIFF#HowtoreaditwithGDAL
`[RD4]`	LibTIFF - TIFF Library and Utilities, https://libtiff.gitlab.io/libtiff/
`[RD5]`	TIFF format tags, https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/content/tiff\_tags.shtml
`[RD6]`	Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) format, https://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/netcdf/
`[RD7]`	Network Common Data Form (NetCDF), Python

https://unidata.github.io/netcdf4-python

Code	Document
`[RD8]`	Well-Known Text representation of coordinate reference systems, https://www.iso.org/standard/63094.html
`[RD9]`	[PDD] `BIO-BPS-PPD-ARE-010083`, BIOMASS Product Performance Description, I/R 3/0/1
`[RD10]`	[L1PDF] `BIO-BPS-L1PFD-ARE-010076`, BIOMASS L1 Product Format Specification, I/R 1/2/8
`[RD11]`	https://docs.ogc.org/is/19-008r4/19-008r4.html#\_geotiff\_configuration\_geokeys