Leaf area index (LAI), which is defined as one half of the total green leaf area per unit ground surface area, is a critical structural variable for quantifying the exchange processes of energy and matter between the land surface and atmosphere, it is thus identified as a key parameter in most terrestrial ecosystem models. To acquire long-term LAI records at the global scale, several remote sensing LAI products have been generated from various satellite sensors. However, assessing the uncertainties associated with these LAI products through comparisons with independent ground-truth measurements is pivotal for an effective application of products. Many sites from global networks have collected and provided invaluable ground LAI measurements covering a wide range of biome types and spatial variabilities. These site-based LAI measurements have been obtained about 30 years (1990-now). However, the spatial scale mismatch between site and pixel observations restricts the utilization of LAI measurements for product time-series validation. This datasets were generated from site-based LAI measurements of FLUXET and Chinese Ecosystem Research Network (CERN), using the proposed GUGM (Grading and Upscaling of Ground Measurements) method to resolve the scale-mismatch issue between site and sensor observations and maximize the utility of time-series of site-based LAI measurements, which can achieve the goal of product time-series validation. This GUGM approach first ingests both high-resolution images and site-based LAI measurements to capture the spatiotemporal variability in the product pixel grid. Then, a strategy was employed to grade the spatial representativeness of LAI measurements in the product pixel grid. For those LAI measurements which cannot be directly used in the validation of products, a strategy was adopted to calculate the spatial upscaling coefficient based on site-based LAI measurements and aggregated high-resolution reference maps to derive reliable LAI time-series validation datasets. The GUGM method has been applied to the site-based LAI measurements to generate global time-series LAI validation datasets from 2001 to 2011 in the 1 km pixel grid. The datasets include 28 sites which are mainly located in North America and Asia, providing 924 validation data in total. Among these sites, 16 sites with 508 (55.0%) validation data were obtained for forest, while 11 sites with 341 (36.9%) validation data and one site with 75 (8.1%) were obtained for crops and grasses, respectively. This datasets were saved in two formats: *.xls and *.kmz and each format was zipped for 63 KB and 31 KB, respectively.

{"references": ["Baodong Xu, Jing Li, Taejin Park, Qinhuo Liu, Yelu Zeng, Gaofei Yin, Jing Zhao, Weiliang Fan, Le Yang, Yuri Knyazikhin, Ranga B. Myneni. An integrated method for validating long-term leaf area index products using global networks of site-based measurements. Remote Sensing of Environment. 2018, 209, 134-151", "Baodong Xu, Jing Li, Qinhuo Liu, Alfredo Huete, Qiang Yu, Yelu Zeng, Gaofei Yin, Jing Zhao, Le Yang. Evaluating spatial representativeness of station observations for remotely sensed leaf area index products. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing. 2016, 9, 3267-3282."]}