to assess how long fire-induced changes in surface albedo persist during
succession. The MODIS albedo product has a 16 day time step and a 1 km spatial
resolution (29). Validation studies show that MODIS satellite-derived albedo agrees well
with available field measurements, especially under snow-free conditions (30). Surface
albedo was retrieved from the MODIS daily cloud-free atmospherically corrected
directional surface reflectance using a semi-empirical bidirectional reflectance
distribution model (BRDF) (31). The associated quality assurance fields are also stored in
the operational product to provide information on the algorithm and product quality.