The LP DAAC was recently notified of an issue with ECOSTRESS Quality information by NASA’s ECOSTRESS Science team at JPL. The quality information reported in the “QC” layer for each ECOSTRESS version 2 Level 2 LSTE data product (ECO_L2_LSTE.002, ECO_L2T_LSTE.002, and ECO_L2G_LSTE.002) does not account for clouds. Users are advised to use the associated cloud mask layer to filter out cloudy pixels to retrieve the highest-quality data. Additionally, cloud and cloud confidence layers are available in the ECO_L2_CLOUD.002 and ECO_L2G_CLOUD.002 data products.
The QA layer description information has been updated accordingly in the User Guides. The Known Issues section on each DOI landing page has also been revised to reflect the updated quality information.
If you have previously accessed ECO_L2_LSTE and ECO_L2T_LSTE version 2 data products through AppEEARS, please be aware that this issue also affects the quality information returned by AppEEARS for these products. Consequently, the decoded quality information for samples submitted before September 3, 2024 will include inaccurate quality descriptions. The recently released AppEEARS version 3.61 includes updated quality descriptions for outputs. Cloud mask information has been added to the AppEEARS outputs in this release as well. AppEEARS users are advised to resubmit their requests to get the most updated quality information.
Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns at LPDAAC@usgs.gov.