Information on land surface properties finds applications in a range of areas related to weather forecasting, environmental research, hazard management and climate monitoring. Remotely sensed observations yield the only means of supplying land surface information with adequate time sampling and a wide spatial coverage. The aim of the Satellite Application Facility for Land Surface Analysis (Land-SAF) is to take full advantage of remotely sensed data to support land, land–atmosphere and biosphere applications, with emphasis on the development and implementation of algorithms that allow operational use of data from European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) sensors. This article provides an overview of the Land-SAF, with brief descriptions of algorithms and validation results. The set of parameters currently estimated and disseminated by the Land-SAF consists of three main groups: (i) the surface radiation budget, including albedo, land surface temperature, and downward short- and longwave fluxes; (ii) the surface water budget (snow cover and evapotranspiration); and (iii) vegetation and wild-fire parameters.

The use of deep learning (DL) approaches for the analysis of remote sensing (RS) data is rapidly increasing. DL techniques have provided excellent results in applications ranging from parameter estimation to image classification and anomaly detection. Although the vast majority of studies report precision indicators, there is a lack of studies dealing with the interpretability of the predictions. This shortcoming hampers a wider adoption of DL approaches by a wider users community, as model’s decisions are not accountable. In applications that involve the management of public budgets or policy compliance, a better interpretability of predictions is strictly required. This work aims to deepen the understanding of a recurrent neural network for land use classification based on Sentinel-2 time series in the context of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This permits to address the relevance of predictors in the classification process leading to an improved understanding of the behaviour of the network. The conducted analysis demonstrates that the red and near infrared Sentinel-2 bands convey the most useful information. With respect to the temporal information, the features derived from summer acquisitions were the most influential. These results contribute to the understanding of models used for decision making in the CAP to accomplish the European Green Deal (EGD) designed in order to counteract climate change, to protect biodiversity and ecosystems, and to ensure a fair economic return for farmers.

Leaf area index (LAI) is a critical variable for land surface and climate modeling studies. Several global LAI products exist, and it is important to know how these products perform and what their uncertainties are. Five major global LAI products—MODIS, GEOV1, GLASS, GLOBMAP, and JRC‐TIP—were compared between 2003 and 2010 at a 0.01° spatial resolution and with a monthly time step. The daily Land‐SAF product was used as a regional reference in order to evaluate the performance of other global products in Africa. Cross‐sensor LAI conversion equations were derived for different biome types. Product uncertainties were assessed by looking into the product quantitative quality indicators (QQIs) attached to MODIS, GEOV1, and JRC‐TIP. MODIS, GEOV1, GLASS, and GLOBMAP are generally consistent and show strong linear relationships between the products (R² > 0.74), with typical deviations of < 0.5 for nonforest and < 1.0 for forest biomes. JRC‐TIP, the only effective LAI product, is about half the values of the other LAI products. The average uncertainties and relative uncertainties are in the following order: MODIS (0.17, 11.5%) < GEOV1 (0.24, 26.6%) < Land‐SAF (0.36, 37.8%) < JRC‐TIP (0.43, 114.3%). The highest relative uncertainties usually appear in ecological transition zones. More than 75% of MODIS, GEOV1, JRC‐TIP, and Land‐SAF pixels are within the absolute uncertainty requirements (± 0.5) set by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), whereas more than 78.5% of MODIS and 44.6% of GEOV1 pixels are within the threshold for relative uncertainty (20%). This study reveals the discrepancies mainly due to differences between definitions, retrieval algorithms, and input data. Future product development and validation studies should focus on areas (e.g., sparsely vegetated and savanna areas) and periods (e.g., winter time) with higher uncertainties.