The objectives of the study are (1) to examine the effects of land cover type, green biomass, and solar zenith angle (SZA) on the bidirectional reflectance distributions (BRDs) of the visible and near-infrared advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) data from NOAA 11 over terrestrial surfaces; and (2) to correct for these effects by developing BRD functions (BRDF). Four land cover types are examined: barren, grassland, forest, and cropland. The data used consist of 1-km daily AVHRR measurements for three growing seasons collected over 19 homogeneous land sites (20¿20 km2 for each site) in the conterminous United States and parts of Canada. BRD is found to be strongly land cover dependent. For the same cover type, BRD is altered significantly by the green biomass present (represented by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)). The effects of SZA on BRDs are also observed over all surface types under investigation. Semiempirical BRDFs were developed to account for these effects that are the functions of the SZA, satellite viewing zenith angle, relative azimuth angle, and NDVI. Good agreements were found between the observed and the modeled bidirectional dependencies for wide ranges of NDVI and SZA. A single BRDF appears to be sufficient for bidirectional correction of the clear-sky AVHRR measurements made over a specific land cover type throughout a season. Finally, the developed BRDFs were used to normalize AVHRR reflectance data to a common geometry and to infer the hemispherical albedos for monitoring the seasonal variations of land surfaces. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1995