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Accurate representation of actual terrestrial surface types at regional to global scales is an important element for many applications. Based on National Aeronautics and Space Administration Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer land cover algorithms, a global surface-type product from observations of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, provides consistent global land cover classification map for various studies, such as land surface modelling for numerical weather predictions, land management, biodiversity and hydrological modelling, and carbon and ecosystem studies. This letter introduces the development and validation of the VIIRS global surface-type product using the land cover classification scheme of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme. Surface reflectance data from VIIRS were composited into monthly data and then into annual metrics. The C5.0 decision tree classifier was used to determine the surface type for each pixel in a 1 km grid. To quantitatively evaluate accuracies of the new surface type product, a visual interpretation-based validation was performed in which high-resolution satellite images and other ancillary data were used as the reference. The validation result based on the large validation data set indicated that (78.64 ± 0.57)% overall classification accuracy was achieved.
