Assessing variability and long-term trends in burned area by merging multiple satellite fire products

Abstract. Long term, high quality estimates of burned area are needed for improving both prognostic and diagnostic fire emissions models and for assessing feedbacks between fire and the climate system. We developed global, monthly burned area estimates aggregated to 0.5° spatial resolution for the time period July 1996 through mid-2009 using four satellite data sets. From 2001–2009, our primary data source was 500-m burned area maps produced using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface reflectance imagery; more than 90% of the global area burned during this time period was mapped in this fashion. During times when the 500-m MODIS data were not available, we used a combination of local…

• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  Awards: NNX08AL03G, NNX08AE97A, NNX08AQ04G, NNX08AF64G
• ES
  European Space Agency