Remote classification of head and backfire types from MODIS fire radiative power and smoke plume observations

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair M. S. Smith ◽  
Martin J. Wooster
Keyword(s):  
Front Propagation ◽  
Pollutant Emissions ◽  
Radiative Energy ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Remote Measurement ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Flaming Combustion ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

The classification of savanna fires into headfire and backfire types can in theory help in assessing pollutant emissions to the atmosphere via relative apportionment of the amounts of smouldering and flaming combustion occurring, and is also important when assessing a fire’s ecological effects. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of whether a combination of visible and thermal satellite remote sensing can be used to classify fires into head and backfire categories. Remote determination of the fire radiative power, alongside assessments of the prevailing direction of the wind (through identification of the fire-related smoke plumes) and the fire front propagation (through its relation to the previously burned area) were used to infer the fire type category and to calculate ‘radiative’ fireline intensity (FLI). The ratio of radiative FLI for the head and backfire categories was found similar to that of in situ fireline intensity measurements, but the magnitudes of the radiative FLI values were around an order of magnitude lower. This agrees with other data suggesting that a fire’s radiative energy is around an order of magnitude lower than the fuel’s theoretical heat yield, and suggests that the remote measurement of radiative FLI and classification of headfire and backfire types is a realistic proposition for large wildfire activity.

scholarly journals Estimation of Direct Fire Emissions from Forests Burning in Siberia

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Evgenii I. Ponomarev
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Summer Period ◽  
Central Siberia ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Emission Estimate ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Siberian Forests ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Using a database on wildfires recorded by remote sensing for 1996–2020, we assessed the seasonal variation of direct carbon emissions from the burning in Siberian forests. We have implemented an approach that takes into account the combustion parameters and the changing intensity of the fire (in terms of Fire Radiative Power (FRP)), which affects the accuracy of the emission estimate. For the last two decades, the range of direct carbon emissions from wildfires was 20–250 Тg С per year. Sporadic maxima were fixed in 2003 (>150 Тg С/year), in 2012 (>220 Тg С/year), and in 2019 (>190 Тg С/year). Preliminary estimation of emissions for 2020 (on 30th of September) was ~180 Tg С/year. Fires in the larch forests of the flat-mountainous taiga region (Central Siberia) made the greatest contribution (>50%) to the budget of direct fire emission, affecting the quality of the atmosphere in vast territories during the summer period. According to the temperature rising and forest burning trend in Siberia, the fire emissions of carbon may double (220 Тg С/year) or even increase by an order of magnitude (>2000 Тg С/year) at the end of the 21st century, which was evaluated depending on IPCC scenario.

scholarly journals Fire emission rates of NO<sub>x</sub> based on the empirical relationship between satellite-derived tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> and fire radiative power

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 28453-28510
Author(s):  
S. F. Schreier ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
J. W. Kaiser ◽  
J. P. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Atmospheric Chemistry ◽  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
Temporal Correlation ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Emission Rates ◽  
Monthly Means ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) play key roles in atmospheric chemistry, air pollution, and climate. While the largest fraction of these reactive gases is released by anthropogenic emission sources, a significant amount can be attributed to vegetation fires. In this study, NO2 from GOME-2 on board EUMETSAT's MetOp-A and OMI on board NASA's Aura as well as fire radiative power (FRP) from the measurements of MODIS on board NASA's Terra and Aqua are used to derive fire emission rates (FERs) of NOx for different types of vegetation using a simple statistical approach. Monthly means of tropospheric NO2 vertical columns (TVC NO2) have been analyzed for their temporal correlation with the monthly means of FRP for five consecutive years from 2007 to 2011 on a horizontal 1° × 1° grid. The strongest correlation is found to be largely confined to tropical and subtropical regions, which account for more than 80% of yearly burned area on average globally. In these regions, the seasonal variation of fire intensity, expressed by the FRP data, is similar to the pattern of TVC NO2. As chemical models typically require values for the amount of NOx being released as a function of time, we have converted the retrieved TVC NO2 into production rates of NOx from fire (Pf) by assuming a constant lifetime of NOx. The comparison between Pf and NOx emissions from GFEDv3.1 over 5 characteristic biomass burning regions in the tropics and subtropics indicated good agreement. By separating the monthly means of Pf and FRP according to land cover type, FERs of NOx could be derived for different biomes. The estimated FERs for the dominating types of vegetation burned are lowest for open shrublands and savannas (0.28–1.03 g NOx s−1 MW−1) and highest for croplands and woody savannas (0.82–1.56 g NOx s−1 MW−1). This analysis demonstrates clearly that there are biome-specific, diurnal, and regional differences in FERs for the dominating types of vegetation burned in the tropics and subtropics. Possible factors affecting the magnitude of the obtained values are discussed.

scholarly journals The empirical relationship between satellite-derived tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> and fire radiative power and possible implications for fire emission rates of NO<sub>x</sub>

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (5) ◽  
pp. 2447-2466 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. F. Schreier ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
J. W. Kaiser ◽  
J. P. Burrows
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Relationship ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Emission Rates ◽  
Monthly Means ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Vegetation Fires ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) play key roles in atmospheric chemistry, air pollution, and climate. While the largest fraction of these reactive gases is released by anthropogenic emission sources, a significant amount can be attributed to vegetation fires. In this study, NO2 from GOME-2 on board EUMETSAT's MetOp-A and OMI on board NASA's Aura as well as fire radiative power (FRP) from the measurements of MODIS on board NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites are used to derive fire emission rates (FERs) of NOx for different types of vegetation using a simple statistical approach. Monthly means of tropospheric NO2 vertical columns (TVC NO2) have been analyzed for their temporal correlation with the monthly means of FRP for five consecutive years from 2007 to 2011 on a horizontal 1° × 1° grid. The strongest correlation is found to be largely confined to tropical and subtropical regions, which account for more than 80% of yearly burned area, on average, globally. In these regions, the seasonal variation of fire intensity, expressed by the FRP data, is similar to the pattern of TVC NO2. As chemical models typically require values for the amount of NOx being released as a function of time, we have converted the retrieved TVC NO2 into production rates of NOx from fire (Pf) by assuming a constant lifetime of NOx. The comparison between Pf and NOx emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFEDv3.1) over 5 characteristic biomass burning regions in the tropics and subtropics shows good agreement. By separating the monthly means of Pf and FRP according to land cover type, FERs of NOx could be derived for different biomes. The estimated FERs for the dominating types of vegetation burned are lowest for open shrublands and savannas (0.28–1.03 g NOx s−1 MW−1) and highest for croplands and woody savannas (0.82–1.56 g NOx s−1 MW−1). This analysis demonstrates that the strong empirical relationship between TVC NO2 and FRP and the following simplified assumptions are a useful tool for the characterization of NOx emission rates from vegetation fires in the tropics and subtropics. Possible factors affecting the magnitude of the obtained values are discussed.

scholarly journals Characterization of wildfire NO<sub>x</sub> emissions using MODIS fire radiative power and OMI tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> columns

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 5839-5851 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. Mebust ◽  
A. R. Russell ◽  
R. C. Hudman ◽  
L. C. Valin ◽  
R. C. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Ozone Monitoring Instrument ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Active Fire ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Flaming Combustion ◽  
Moderate Resolution ◽  
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ◽  
Current Emission ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. We use observations of fire radiative power (FRP) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer~(MODIS) and tropospheric NO2 column measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) to derive NO2 wildfire emission coefficients (g MJ−1) for three land types over California and Nevada. Retrieved emission coefficients were 0.279±0.077, 0.342±0.053, and 0.696±0.088 g MJ−1 NO2 for forest, grass and shrub fuels, respectively. These emission coefficients reproduce ratios of emissions with fuel type reported previously using independent methods. However, the magnitude of these coefficients is lower than prior estimates. While it is possible that a negative bias in the OMI NO2 retrieval over regions of active fire emissions is partly responsible, comparison with several other studies of fire emissions using satellite platforms indicates that current emission factors may overestimate the contributions of flaming combustion and underestimate the contributions of smoldering combustion to total fire emissions. Our results indicate that satellite data can provide an extensive characterization of the variability in fire NOx emissions; 67 % of the variability in emissions in this region can be accounted for using an FRP-based parameterization.

scholarly journals Varying relationships between fire radiative power and fire size at a global scale

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Laurent ◽  
Florent Mouillot ◽  
Maria Vanesa Moreno ◽  
Chao Yue ◽  
Philippe Ciais
Keyword(s):  
Patch Size ◽  
Empirical Relation ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. Vegetation fires are an important process in the Earth system. Fire intensity locally impacts fuel consumption, damage to the vegetation, chemical composition of fire emissions and also how fires spread across landscapes. It has been observed that fire occurrence, defined as the frequency of active fires detected by the MODIS sensor, is related to intensity with a hump-shaped empirical relation, meaning that occurrence reaches a maximum at intermediate fire intensity. Raw burned area products obtained from remote sensing can not discriminate between ignition and propagation processes. To go beyond burned area and to test if fire size is driven by fire intensity at a global scale as expected from empirical fire spread models, we used the newly delivered global FRY database, which provides fire patch functional traits based on satellite observation, including fire patch size, and the fire radiative power measures from the MCD14ML dataset. This paper describes the varying relationships between fire size and fire radiative power across biomes at a global scale. We show that in most fire regions of the world defined by the GFED database, the linear relationship between fire radiative power and fire patch size saturates for a threshold of intermediate-intensity fires. The value of this threshold differs from one region to another and depends on vegetation type. In the most fire-prone savanna regions, once this threshold is reached, fire size decreases for the most intense fires, which mostly happen in the late fire season. According to the percolation theory, we suggest that the decrease in fire size for more intense late season fires is a consequence of the increasing fragmentation of fuel continuity throughout the fire season and suggest that landscape-scale feedbacks should be developed in global fire modules.

Use of ordinary kriging and Gaussian conditional simulation to interpolate airborne fire radiative energy density estimates

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 228 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Klauberg ◽  
A. T. Hudak ◽  
B. C. Bright ◽  
L. Boschetti ◽  
M. B. Dickinson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Density ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Ordinary Kriging ◽  
Conditional Simulation ◽  
Radiative Energy ◽  
Density Estimates ◽  
Prescribed Burns ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Air Force Base ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Fire radiative energy density (FRED, J m−2) integrated from fire radiative power density (FRPD, W m−2) observations of landscape-level fires can present an undersampling problem when collected from fixed-wing aircraft. In the present study, the aircraft made multiple passes over the fire at ~3 min intervals, thus failing to observe most of the FRPD emitted as the flame front spread. We integrated the sparse FRPD time series to obtain pixel-level FRED estimates, and subsequently applied ordinary kriging (OK) and Gaussian conditional simulation (GCS) to interpolate across data voids caused by the undersampling. We compared FRED interpolated via OK and GCS with FRED estimated independently from ground measurements of biomass consumed from five prescribed burns at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, USA. In four of five burns considered where undersampling prevailed, OK and GCS effectively interpolated FRED estimates across the data voids, improving the spatial distribution of FRED across the burning event and its overall mean. In a fifth burn, the burning characteristics were such that undersampling did not present a problem needing to be fixed. We also determined where burning and FRPD sampling characteristics merited applying OK and CGS only to the highest FRED estimates to interpolate more accurate FRED maps.

scholarly journals Forecasting the regional fire radiative power for regularly ignited vegetation fires

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tero M. Partanen ◽  
Mikhail Sofiev
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Meteorological Data ◽  
Grid Cell ◽  
Radiative Energy ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
High Temporal Resolution ◽  
South Central ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Cloud Mask ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Abstract. This paper presents a phenomenological framework for forecasting the area-integrated fire radiative power from wildfires. In the method, a region of interest is covered with a regular grid, which cells are uniquely and independently parameterized with regard to the fire intensity according to (i) the fire incidence history, (ii) the retrospective meteorological information, and (iii) remotely-sensed high temporal resolution fire radiative power taken together with (iv) consistent cloud mask data. The parameterization is realized by fitting the predetermined functions for diurnal and annual profiles of fire radiative power to the remote-sensing observations. After the parametrization, the input for the fire radiative power forecast is the meteorological data alone, i.e., the weather forecast. The method is tested retrospectively for south-central African savannah areas with grid cell size of 1.5° × 1.5°. The input data included ECMWF ERA5 meteorological reanalysis and SEVIRI/MSG Fire Radiative Power and Cloud Mask. It has been found that in the areas with large numbers of wildfires regularly ignited on a daily basis during dry seasons from year to year, the temporal fire radiative power evolution is quite predictable, whereas the areas with irregular fire behaviour predictability was low. The predictive power of the method is demonstrated by comparing the predicted fire radiative power patterns and fire radiative energy values against the corresponding remote-sensing observations. The current method showed good skills for the considered African regions and was useful in understanding the challenges in predicting the wildfires in a more general case.

scholarly journals Fire Detection and Fire Radiative Power in Forests and Low-Biomass Lands in Northeast Asia: MODIS versus VIIRS Fire Products

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 2870
Author(s):  
Yuyun Fu ◽  
Rui Li ◽  
Xuewen Wang ◽  
Yves Bergeron ◽  
Osvaldo Valeria ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Infrared Imaging ◽  
Northeast Asia ◽  
Fire Detection ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Commission Errors ◽  
Fire Emissions ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Moderate Resolution ◽  
Fire Radiative Power

Fire omission and commission errors, and the accuracy of fire radiative power (FRP) from satellite moderate-resolution impede the studies on fire regimes and FRP-based fire emissions estimation. In this study, we compared the accuracy between the extensively used 1-km fire product of MYD14 from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the 375-m fire product of VNP14IMG from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) in Northeastern Asia using data from 2012–2017. We extracted almost simultaneous observation of fire detection and FRP from MODIS-VIIRS overlapping orbits from the two fire products, and identified and removed duplicate fire detections and corresponding FRP in each fire product. We then compared the performance of the two products between forests and low-biomass lands (croplands, grasslands, and herbaceous vegetation). Among fire pixels detected by VIIRS, 65% and 83% were missed by MODIS in forests and low-biomass lands, respectively; whereas associated omission rates by VIIRS for MODIS fire pixels were 35% and 53%, respectively. Commission errors of the two fire products, based on the annual mean measurements of burned area by Landsat, decreased with increasing FRP per fire pixel, and were higher in low-biomass lands than those in forests. Monthly total FRP from MODIS was considerably lower than that from VIIRS due to more fire omission by MODIS, particularly in low-biomass lands. However, for fires concurrently detected by both sensors, total FRP was lower with VIIRS than with MODIS. This study contributes to a better understanding of fire detection and FRP retrieval performance between MODIS and its successor VIIRS, providing valuable information for using those data in the study of fire regimes and FRP-based fire emission estimation.

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