Satellite versus ground-based estimates of burned area: A comparison between MODIS based burned area and fire agency reports over North America in 2007. (August 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Mangeon, Stéphane; Field, Robert; Fromm, Michael; McHugh, Charles; Voulgarakis, Apostolos
• Is Part Of: Anthropocene review. Volume 3:Number 2(2016)
• Page Start: 76
• Page End: 92
• Publication Date: 2016-08
• Subjects: daily burned area -- GFED -- fire agency -- ICS-209 -- North America -- satellite observation; Nature -- Effect of human beings on -- Periodicals; Global environmental change -- Periodicals; Human ecology -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1177/2053019615588790
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2053-0196

Abstract

North American wildfire management teams routinely assess burned area on site during firefighting campaigns; meanwhile, satellite observations provide systematic and global burned-area data. Here we compare satellite and ground-based daily burned area for wildfire events for selected large fires across North America in 2007 on daily timescales. In a sample of 26 fires across North America, we found the Global Fire Emissions Database Version 4 (GFED4) estimated about 80% of the burned area logged in ground-based Incident Status Summary (ICS-209) over 8-day analysis windows. Linear regression analysis found a slope between GFED and ICS-209 of 0.67 (with R = 0.96). The agreement between these data sets was found to degrade at short timescales (from R = 0.81 for 4-day to R = 0.55 for 2-day). Furthermore, during large burning days (> 3000 ha) GFED4 typically estimates half of the burned area logged in the ICS-209 estimates.