ICESat-2 Plugin Module

1. Overview

The ICESat-2 API queries a set of ATL03 input granules for photon heights and locations based on a set of photon-input parameters that select the geographic and temporal extent of the request. It then selects a subset of these photons based on a set of photon classification parameters, and divides these selected photons into short along-track extents, each of which is suitable for generating a single height estimate. These extents may be returned to the python client, or may be passed to the ATL06 height-estimation module. The ATL06 height-estimation module fits line segments to the photon heights and locations in each extent, and selects segments based on their quality to return to the user.

1.1 Assets

When accessing SlideRule as a service, there are many times when you need to specify which source datasets it should use when processing the data. A source dataset is called an asset and is specified by its name as a string.

The asset name tells SlideRule where to get the data, and what format the data should be in. The following assets are supported by the ICESat-2 deployment of SlideRule:

asset	format	path	index	region	endpoint
nsidc-s3	cumulus	nsidc-cumulus-prod-protected	empty.index	us-west-2	https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
atlas-s3	s3	icesat2-sliderule/data/ATLAS	empty.index	us-west-2	https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com

2. Parameters

Parameters are passed to the SlideRule API as a dictionary in any order, but may be loosely divided into four groups: geographic and temporal parameters, classification parameters, extent parameters, and segment quality parameters. Not all parameters need to be defined when making a request; there are reasonable defaults used for each parameter so that only those parameters that you want to customize need to be specified.

2.1 Photon-input parameters

The photon-input parameters allow the user to select an area, a time range, or a specific ATL03 granule to use for input to the photon-selection algorithm. If multiple parameters are specified, the result will be those photons that match all of the parameters.

• "poly": polygon defining region of interest (see polygons)

• "track": reference pair track number (1, 2, 3, or 0 to include for all three; defaults to 0)

• "rgt": reference ground track (defaults to all if not specified)

• "cycle": counter of 91-day repeat cycles completed by the mission (defaults to all if not specified)

• "region": geographic region for corresponding standard product (defaults to all if not specified)

• "t0": start time for filtering granules (format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ, e.g. 2018-10-13T00:00:00Z)

• "t1": stop time for filtering granuels (format %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ, e.g. 2018-10-13T00:00:00Z)

2.1.1 Polygons

All polygons provided to the ICESat-2 module functions must be provided as a list of dictionaries containing longitudes and latitudes in counter-clockwise order with the first and last point matching.

For example:

region = [ {"lon": -108.3435200747503, "lat": 38.89102961045247},
           {"lon": -107.7677425431139, "lat": 38.90611184543033},
           {"lon": -107.7818591266989, "lat": 39.26613714985466},
           {"lon": -108.3605610678553, "lat": 39.25086131372244},
           {"lon": -108.3435200747503, "lat": 38.89102961045247} ]

In order to facilitate other formats, the icesat2.toregion function can be used to convert polygons from the GeoJSON and Shapefile formats to the format accepted by SlideRule.

Note that the maximum number of points in a polygon supported by SlideRule is 16384, and as the number of points in the polygon grows, the amount of time it takes to process grows as well. It is recommended for performance reasons that polygons are kept to fewer than 32 points. Use the icesat2.toregion function’s tolerance parameter to reduce the number of points in a provided shape.

2.1.2 Time

All times returned in result records are in number of seconds (fractual, double precision) since the ATLAS Standard Data Product (SDP) epoch which is January 1, 2018 at midnight (2018-01-01:T00.00.00.000000Z).

To convert ATLAS SDP time to standard GPS time, you need to add the number of seconds since the GPS epoch which is Junary 6, 2018 at midnight (1980-01-06T00:00:00.000000Z) from the ATLAS SDP epoch. That number is 1198800018 seconds.

The SlideRule Python client provides helper functions to perform the conversion. See gps2utc.

For APIs that return GeoDataFrames, the “time” column values are represented as a datatime with microsecond precision.

2.2 Photon-selection parameters

Once the ATL03 input data are are selected, a set of photon-selection photon parameters are used to select from among the available photons. At this stage, additional photon-classification algorithms (ATL08, YAPC) may be selected beyond what is available in the ATL03 files. The criterial described by these parameters are applied together, so that only photons that fulfill all of the requirements are returned.

2.2.1 Native ATL03 photon classification

ATL03 contains a set of photon classification values, that are designed to identify signal photons for different surface types with specified confidence:

• "srt": surface type: 0-land, 1-ocean, 2-sea ice, 3-land ice, 4-inland water

• "cnf": confidence level for photon selection, can be supplied as a single value (which means the confidence must be at least that), or a list (which means the confidence must be in the list)

• "quality_ph": quality classification based on an ATL03 algorithms that attempt to identify instrumental artifacts, can be supplied as a single value (which means the classification must be exactly that), or a list (which means the classification must be in the list).

The signal confidence can be supplied as strings {“atl03_tep”, “atl03_not_considered”, “atl03_background”, “atl03_within_10m”, “atl03_low”, “atl03_medium”, “atl03_high”} or as numbers {-2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4}. The default values, of srt=3, cnf=0, and quality_ph=0 will return all photons not flagged as instrumental artifacts, and the ‘cnf’ parameter will match the land-ice classification.

2.2.2 ATL08 classification

If ATL08 classification parameters are specified, the ATL08 (vegetation height) files corresponding to the ATL03 files are queried for the more advanced classification scheme available in those files. Photons are then selected based on the classification values specified. Note that srt=0 (land) and cnf=0 (no native filtering) should be specified to allow all ATL08 photons to be used.

• "atl08_class": list of ATL08 classifications used to select which photons are used in the processing (the available classifications are: “atl08_noise”, “atl08_ground”, “atl08_canopy”, “atl08_top_of_canopy”, “atl08_unclassified”)

2.2.3 YAPC classification

The experimental YAPC (Yet Another Photon Classifier) photon-classification scheme assigns each photon a score based on the number of adjacent photons. YAPC parameters are provided as a dictionary, with entries described below:

• "yapc": settings for the yapc algorithm; if provided then SlideRule will execute the YAPC classification on all photons

  • "score": the minimum yapc classification score of a photon to be used in the processing request

  • "knn": the number of nearest neighbors to use, or specify 0 to allow automatic selection of the number of neighbors (recommended)

  • "min_ph": the minimum number of photons needed in an extent in order to calculate a YAPC score for each photon

  • "win_h": the window height used to filter the nearest neighbors

  • "win_x": the window width used to filter the nearest neighbors

To run the YAPC algorithm, specify the YAPC settings as a sub-dictionary. Here is an example set of parameters that runs YAPC:

parms = {
    "cnf": 0,
    "yapc": { "score": 0, "knn": 4 },
    "ats": 10.0,
    "cnt": 5,
    "len": 20.0,
    "res": 20.0,
    "maxi": 1
}

2.3 Photon-extent parameters

Selected photons are collected into extents, each of which may be suitable for elevation fitting. The _len_ parameter specifies the length of each extent, and the _res_parameter specifies the distance between subsequent extent centers. If _res_ is less than _len_, subsequent segments will contain duplicate photons. The API may also select photons based on their along-track distance, or based on the segment-id parameters in the ATL03 product (see the _dist_in_seg_ parameter).

• "len": length of each extent in meters

• "res": step distance for successive extents in meters

• "dist_in_seg": true|false flag indicating that the units of the "len" and "res" are in ATL03 segments (e.g. if true then a len=2 is exactly 2 ATL03 segments which is approximately 40 meters)

Extents are optionally filtered based on the number of photons in each extent and the distribution of those photons. If the "pass_invalid" parameter is set to _False_, only those extents fulfilling these criteria will be returned.

• "pass_invalid": true|false flag indicating whether or not extents that fail validation checks are still used and returned in the results

• "ats": minimum along track spread

• "cnt": minimum photon count in segment

2.4 ATL06-SR algorithm parameters

The ATL06-SR algorithm fits a line segment to the photons in each extent, using an iterative selection refinement to eliminate noise photons not correctly identified by the photon classification. The results are then checked against three parameters : ‘‘“sigma_r_max”’’, which eliminates segments for which the robust dispersion of the residuals is too large, and the "ats" and "cnt" parameters described above, which eliminate segments for which the iterative fitting has eliminated too many photons. The optional ‘‘“compact”’’ instructs the algorithm to return a minimal subset of ATL06-SR segment parameters.

• "maxi": maximum iterations, not including initial least-squares-fit selection

• "H_min_win": minimum height to which the refined photon-selection window is allowed to shrink, in meters

• "sigma_r_max": maximum robust dispersion in meters

• "compact": return compact version of results (leaves out most metadata)

2.5 Recommended parameters

A set of parameters that most closely matches the ICESat-2 project ATL06 product is as follows:

parms = {
    "srt":3,
    "cnf": 1,
    "ats": 20.0,
    "cnt": 10,
    "len": 40.0,
    "res": 20.0,
    "maxi": 6
}

To obtain fewer false-positive returns, this set of parameters can be modified with cnf=3 or cnf=4.

4. Returned data

Two main kinds of data are returned by the ICESat-2 API: segmented photon data (from the ATL03 and ATL03p algorithms), and elevation date (from the ATL06 and ATL06p algorithms).

4.1 Segmented Photon Data

The photon data is stored as along-track segments inside the ATL03 granules, which is then broken apart by SlideRule and re-segmented according to processing parameters supplied at the time of the request. The new segments are called extents. When the length of an extent is 40 meters, and the step size is 20 meters, the extent matches the ATL06 segments.

Most of the time, the photon extents are kept internal to SlideRule and not returned to the user. But there are some APIs that do return raw photon extents for the user to process on their own. Even though this offloads processing on the server, the API calls can take longer since more data needs to be returned to the user, which can bottleneck over the network.

Photon extents are returned as GeoDataFrames where each row is a photon. Each extent represents the data that the ATL06 algorithm uses to generate a single ATL06 elevation. When the step size is shorter than the length of the extent, the extents returned overlap eachother which means that each photon is being returned multiple times and will be duplicated in the resulting GeoDataFrame.

The GeoDataFrame for each photon extent has the following columns:

• "track": reference pair track number (1, 2, 3)

• "sc_orient": spacecraft orientation (0: backwards, 1: forwards)

• "rgt": reference ground track

• "cycle": cycle

• "segment_id": segment ID of first ATL03 segment in result

• "segment_dist": along track distance from the equator to the center of the extent (in meters)

• "count": the number of photons in the segment

• "delta_time": seconds from ATLAS Standard Data Product (SDP) epoch (Jan 1, 2018)

• "latitude": latitude (-90.0 to 90.0)

• "longitude": longitude (-180.0 to 180.0)

• "distance": along track distance of the photon in meters (with respect to the center of the segment)

• "height": height of the photon in meters

• "atl08_class": the photon’s ATL08 classification (0: noise, 1: ground, 2: canopy, 3: top of canopy, 4: unclassified)

• "atl03_cnf": the photon’s ATL03 confidence level (-2: TEP, -1: not considered, 0: background, 1: within 10m, 2: low, 3: medium, 4: high)

• "quality_ph": the photon’s quality classification (0: nominal, 1: possible after pulse, 2: possible impulse responpse effect, 3: possible tep)

• "yapc_score": the photon’s YAPC classification (0 - 255, the larger the number the higher the confidence in surface reflection)

4.2 Elevations

The primary result returned by SlideRule for ICESat-2 processing requests is a set of gridded elevations corresponding to a geolocated ATL03 along-track segment. The elevations are contained in a GEoDataFrame where each row represents a calculated elevation.

Elements that are present in the compact version of the results are noted below.

The elevation GeoDataFrame has the following columns:

• "segment_id": segment ID of first ATL03 segment in result

• "n_fit_photons": number of photons used in final calculation

• "pflags": processing flags (0x1 - spread too short; 0x2 - too few photons; 0x4 - max iterations reached)

• "rgt": reference ground track

• "cycle": cycle

• "spot": laser spot 1 to 6

• "gt": ground track (10: GT1L, 20: GT1R, 30: GT2L, 40: GT2R, 50: GT3L, 60: GT3R)

• "distance": along track distance from the equator in meters

• "delta_time": seconds from ATLAS Standard Product epoch (Jan 1, 2018) [in compact]

• "lat": latitude (-90.0 to 90.0) [in compact]

• "lon": longitude (-180.0 to 180.0) [in compact]

• "h_mean": elevation in meters from ellipsoid [in compact]

• "dh_fit_dx": along-track slope

• "dh_fit_dy": across-track slope

• "w_surface_window_final": width of the window used to select the final set of photons used in the calculation

• "rms_misfit": measured error in the linear fit of the surface

• "h_sigma": error estimate for the least squares fit model

5 Callbacks

For large processing requests, it is possible that the data returned from the API is too large or impractical to fit in the local memory of the Python interpreter making the request. In these cases, certain APIs in the SlideRule Python client allow the calling application to provide a callback function that is called for every resource and result that is returned by the servers. If a callback is supplied, the API will not return anything back to the calling application and instead will assume all output is captured and handled by the callback. The callback function takes the following form:

callback(resource, result, result_cnt, total_resources)

Callback that handles the results of a processing request for the given resource.

Parameters

• resource (str) – name of the resource being processed (i.e. granule)

• result (GeoDataFrame) – GeoDataFrame containing the results of the processing

• result_cnt (int) – current number of resources that have been processed

• total_resources (int) – total number of resources that need to be processed

Here is an example of a callback being used for the atl06p function:

# create hdf5 writer
hdf5writer = Hdf5Writer(cfg["filename"], parms)

# atl06 processing request
icesat2.atl06p(parms, cfg["asset"], max_workers=cfg["max_workers"], callback=lambda resource, result, index, total : hdf5writer.run(resource, result, index, total))

# close hdf5 file
hdf5writer.finish()

6 Endpoints

atl06

---

POST /source/atl06 <request payload>

Perform ATL06-SR processing on ATL03 data and return gridded elevations

Request Payload (application/json)

parameter	description	default
atl03-asset	data source (see Assets)	atlas-local
resource	ATL03 HDF5 filename	required
parms	ATL06-SR algorithm processing configuration (see Parameters)	required
timeout	number of seconds to wait for first response	wait forever

HTTP Example

POST /source/atl06 HTTP/1.1
Host: my-sliderule-server:9081
Content-Length: 179

{"atl03-asset": "atlas-local", "resource": "ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5", "parms": {"cnf": 4, "ats": 20.0, "cnt": 10, "len": 40.0, "res": 20.0, "maxi": 1}}

Python Example

# Build ATL06 Parameters
parms = {
    "cnf": 4,
    "ats": 20.0,
    "cnt": 10,
    "len": 40.0,
    "res": 20.0,
    "maxi": 1
}

# Build ATL06 Request
rqst = {
    "atl03-asset" : "atlas-local",
    "resource": "ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5",
    "parms": parms
}

# Execute ATL06 Algorithm
rsps = sliderule.source("atl06", rqst, stream=True)

Response Payload (application/octet-stream)

Serialized stream of gridded elevations of type atl06rec. See De-serialization for a description of how to process binary response records.

atl03s

---

POST /source/atl03s <request payload>

Subset ATL03 data and return segments of photons

Request Payload (application/json)

parameter	description	default
atl03-asset	data source (see Assets)	atlas-local
resource	ATL03 HDF5 filename	required
parms	ATL06-SR algorithm processing configuration (see Parameters)	required
timeout	number of seconds to wait for first response	wait forever

HTTP Example

POST /source/atl03s HTTP/1.1
Host: my-sliderule-server:9081
Content-Length: 134

{"atl03-asset": "atlas-local", "resource": "ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5", "parms": {"len": 40.0, "res": 20.0}}

Python Example

# Build ATL06 Parameters
parms = {
    "len": 40.0,
    "res": 20.0,
}

# Build ATL06 Request
rqst = {
    "atl03-asset" : "atlas-local",
    "resource": "ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5",
    "parms": parms
}

# Execute ATL06 Algorithm
rsps = sliderule.source("atl03s", rqst, stream=True)

Response Payload (application/octet-stream)

Serialized stream of photon segments of type atl03rec. See De-serialization for a description of how to process binary response records.

indexer

---

POST /source/indexer <request payload>

Return a set of meta-data index records for each ATL03 resource (i.e. H5 file) listed in the request. Index records are used to create local indexes of the resources available to be processed, which in turn support spatial and temporal queries. Note, while SlideRule supports native meta-data indexing, this feature is typically not used in favor of accessing the NASA CMR system directly.

Request Payload (application/json)

parameter	description	default
atl03-asset	data source (see Assets)	atlas-local
resources	List of ATL03 HDF5 filenames	required
timeout	number of seconds to wait for first response	wait forever

HTTP Example

POST /source/indexer HTTP/1.1
Host: my-sliderule-server:9081
Content-Length: 131

{"atl03-asset": "atlas-local", "resources": ["ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5", "ATL03_20190512123214_06760302_003_01.h5"]}

Python Example

# Build Indexer Request
rqst = {
    "atl03-asset" : "atlas-local",
    "resources": ["ATL03_20181019065445_03150111_003_01.h5", "ATL03_20190512123214_06760302_003_01.h5"],
}

# Execute ATL06 Algorithm
rsps = sliderule.source("indexer", rqst, stream=True)

Response Payload (application/octet-stream)

Serialized stream of ATL03 meta-data index records of type atl03rec.index. See De-serialization for a description of how to process binary response records.