Daily LAI maps over South America were produced from the 4-day
global 1-km MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer)
LAI product (MCD15A3 Terra-Aqua combined, Collection 5). The product
was temporally smoothed and gap-filled following the procedures
described by Gao et al. (2008) based on the TIMESAT algorithm of
Jonsson and Eklundh (2004). The smoothing procedure assigns greater
weight to MODIS LAI retrievals with the highest quality, as recorded in
the product quality control bits. The final smoothed and gap-filled