The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed, and direction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anonymous
Keyword(s):  
Fire Size ◽  
Fire Atlas

scholarly journals Assessing the accuracy of remotely-sensed fire datasets across the Southwestern Mediterranean basin

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Felipe Galizia ◽  
Thomas Curt ◽  
Renaud Barbero ◽  
Marcos Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Quantitative Estimate ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Northern Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fire Atlas ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Size Threshold

Abstract. Recently, many remote-sensing (RS) based datasets providing features of individual fire events from gridded global burned area products have been released. Although very promising, these datasets still lack a quantitative estimate of their accuracy with respect to historical ground-based fire databases. Here, we compared three state-of-the-art RS datasets (Fire Atlas, FRY and GlobFire) with high-quality ground databases compiled by regional fire agencies (AG) across the Southwestern Mediterranean basin (2005–2015). We assessed the spatial and temporal accuracy in estimated RS burned area (BA) and number of fires (NF) aggregated at monthly and 0.25° resolutions, considering different individual fire size thresholds ranging from 1 to 500 ha. Our results show that RS datasets were highly correlated with AG in terms of monthly BA and NF but severely underestimated both (by 38 % and 96 %, respectively) when considering all fires > 1 ha. Stronger agreement was found when increasing the fire size threshold, with fires > 100 ha denoting higher correlation and much lower error (BA 10 %; NF 35%). The agreement between RS and AG was also the highest during the warm season (May to October) in particular across the regions with greater fire activity such as the Northern Iberian Peninsula. The Fire Atlas displayed a slightly better performance, with a lower relative error, although uncertainty in gridded BA product largely outpaced uncertainties across the RS datasets. Overall, our findings suggest a reasonable agreement between RS and ground-based datasets for fires larger than 100 ha, but care is needed when examining smaller fires at regional scales.

scholarly journals Assessing the accuracy of remotely sensed fire datasets across the southwestern Mediterranean Basin

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Luiz Felipe Galizia ◽  
Thomas Curt ◽  
Renaud Barbero ◽  
Marcos Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Northern Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fire Atlas ◽  
Highly Correlated ◽  
Size Threshold

Abstract. Recently, many remote-sensing datasets providing features of individual fire events from gridded global burned area products have been released. Although very promising, these datasets still lack a quantitative estimate of their accuracy with respect to historical ground-based fire datasets. Here, we compared three state-of-the-art remote-sensing datasets (RSDs; Fire Atlas, FRY, and GlobFire) with a harmonized ground-based dataset (GBD) compiled by fire agencies monitoring systems across the southwestern Mediterranean Basin (2005–2015). We assessed the agreement between the RSDs and the GBD with respect to both burned area (BA) and number of fires (NF). RSDs and the GBD were aggregated at monthly and 0.25∘ resolutions, considering different individual fire size thresholds ranging from 1 to 500 ha. Our results show that all datasets were highly correlated in terms of monthly BA and NF, but RSDs severely underestimated both (by 38 % and 96 %, respectively) when considering all fires > 1 ha. The agreement between RSDs and the GBD was strongly dependent on individual fire size and strengthened when increasing the fire size threshold, with fires  > 100 ha denoting a higher correlation and much lower error (BA 10 %; NF 35 %). The agreement was also higher during the warm season (May to October) in particular across the regions with greater fire activity such as the northern Iberian Peninsula. The Fire Atlas displayed a slightly better performance with a lower relative error, although uncertainty in the gridded BA product largely outpaced uncertainties across the RSDs. Overall, our findings suggest a reasonable agreement between RSDs and the GBD for fires larger than 100 ha, but care is needed when examining smaller fires at regional scales.

scholarly journals The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed and direction

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 529-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Andela ◽  
Douglas C. Morton ◽  
Louis Giglio ◽  
Ronan Paugam ◽  
Yang Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Arid Ecosystems ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Ecosystem Structure ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Fire Atlas ◽  
Strong Control

Abstract. Natural and human-ignited fires affect all major biomes, altering ecosystem structure, biogeochemical cycles and atmospheric composition. Satellite observations provide global data on spatiotemporal patterns of biomass burning and evidence for the rapid changes in global fire activity in response to land management and climate. Satellite imagery also provides detailed information on the daily or sub-daily position of fires that can be used to understand the dynamics of individual fires. The Global Fire Atlas is a new global dataset that tracks the dynamics of individual fires to determine the timing and location of ignitions, fire size and duration, and daily expansion, fire line length, speed, and direction of spread. Here, we present the underlying methodology and Global Fire Atlas results for 2003–2016 derived from daily moderate-resolution (500 m) Collection 6 MCD64A1 burned-area data. The algorithm identified 13.3 million individual fires over the study period, and estimated fire perimeters were in good agreement with independent data for the continental United States. A small number of large fires dominated sparsely populated arid and boreal ecosystems, while burned area in agricultural and other human-dominated landscapes was driven by high ignition densities that resulted in numerous smaller fires. Long-duration fires in boreal regions and natural landscapes in the humid tropics suggest that fire season length exerts a strong control on fire size and total burned area in these areas. In arid ecosystems with low fuel densities, high fire spread rates resulted in large, short-duration fires that quickly consumed available fuels. Importantly, multiday fires contributed the majority of burned area in all biomass burning regions. A first analysis of the largest, longest and fastest fires that occurred around the world revealed coherent regional patterns of extreme fires driven by large-scale climate forcing. Global Fire Atlas data are publicly available through http://www.globalfiredata.org (last access: 9 August 2018) and https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1642, and individual fire information and summary data products provide new information for benchmarking fire models within ecosystem and Earth system models, understanding vegetation–fire feedbacks, improving global emissions estimates, and characterizing the changing role of fire in the Earth system.

scholarly journals The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed, and direction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Andela ◽  
Douglas C. Morton ◽  
Louis Giglio ◽  
Ronan Paugam ◽  
Yang Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Arid Ecosystems ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Ecosystem Structure ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
Fire Atlas ◽  
Strong Control

Abstract. Natural and human-ignited fires affect all major biomes, altering ecosystem structure, biogeochemical cycles, and atmospheric composition. Satellite observations provide global data on spatiotemporal patterns of biomass burning and evidence for rapid changes in global fire activity in response to land management and climate. Satellite imagery also provides detailed information on the daily or subdaily position of fires that can be used to understand the dynamics of individual fires. The Global Fire Atlas is a new global dataset that tracks the dynamics of individual fires to determine the timing and location of ignitions and fire size, duration, daily expansion, fire line length, speed, and direction of spread. Here we present the underlying methodology and Global Fire Atlas results for 2003–2016 derived from daily moderate resolution (500 m) Collection 6 MCD64A1 burned area data. The algorithm identified 13.3 million individual fires over the study period, and estimated fire perimeters were in good agreement with independent data for the continental United States. A small number of large fires dominated sparsely populated arid and boreal ecosystems, while burned area in agricultural and other human-dominated landscapes was driven by high ignition densities that resulted in numerous smaller fires. Long-duration fires in the boreal regions and natural landscapes in the humid tropics suggest that fire-season length exerts a strong control on fire size and total burned area in these areas. In arid ecosystems with low fuel densities, high fire spread rates resulted in large, short-duration fires that quickly consumed available fuels. Importantly, multi-day fires contributed the majority of burned area in all biomass burning regions. A first analysis of the largest, longest, and fastest fires that occurred around the world revealed coherent regional patterns of extreme fires driven by large-scale climate forcing. Global Fire Atlas data are publicly available through www.globalfiredata.org/ and https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1642, and individual fire information and summary data products provide new information for benchmarking fire models within ecosystem and Earth system models, understanding vegetation-fire feedbacks, improving global emissions estimates, and characterizing the changing role of fire in the Earth system.

Fire frequency is relatively more important than fire size — A reply to Russell-Smith et al

2015 ◽  
Vol 192 ◽  
pp. 478
Author(s):  
Anthony D. Griffiths ◽  
Stephen T. Garnett ◽  
Barry W. Brook
Keyword(s):  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Fire Size

Spatial patterns of fire patch size and shape complexity in the Brazilian savanna

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joana Nogueira ◽  
Julia Rodrigues ◽  
Jan Lehmann ◽  
Hanna Meyer ◽  
Renata Libonati
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Shape Index ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Core Area ◽  
Validation Dataset ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Size And Shape ◽  
The North ◽  
Shape Complexity

<p>Fire events on a landscape scale are a widespread global phenomenon that influences the interactions between atmosphere and biosphere. Global burned area (BA) products derived from satellite images are used in dynamic vegetation fire modules to estimate greenhouse gas emissions, available fuel biomass and anthropic factors driving fire spread. Fire size and shape complexity from individual fire events can provide better estimates of fuel consumption, fire intensity, post fire vegetation recovery and their effects on landscape changes to better understand regional fire dynamics. Especially in the Brazilian savannas (Cerrado), a mosaic of heterogeneous vegetation where has prevailed an official “zero-fire” policy for decades leading to an increase in large wildfires, intensified also by rapid changes of land use using fire to land clearing in agriculture and livestock purposes. In this way, we aim to assess the fire size and shape patterns in Cerrado from 2013 to 2015, identifying each fire patch event from Landsat BA product and calculating its fire features with landscape metrics. We calculated its surface area to evaluate fire size and the metrics of shape index, core area and eccentricity from an ellipse fitting from burned pixels to estimate the fire shape complexity. The study focused on 48 Landsat path/row scenes and the analysis final compared the fire features of overlapped patches between the years. The total number of coincident fire patches is higher between the years 2013 and 2015 than 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. Large fires are found in the north and east regions for all comparisons. In this region, high core area values are consistent for having large areas of burnt patches and low shape index values and more elongated patches revealed a low fire shape complexity. These results demonstrate a greater burned area in the north, where the remaining native vegetation and less fragmented landscapes allow the fire to spread, when associated with favorable meteorological conditions. However, with the implementation of a new agricultural frontier in 2015, this region is under greater anthropic pressure with positive trends to land use. In the south, the fire shapes are already more complex and smaller because they are from agricultural areas historically developed, and consequently the landscape is more fragmented. Our results demonstrate a distinct spatial pattern of fire shape and size in Cerrado related to fragmentation of landscape and fire use to land cleaning. This information can help the modelling estimates of fire spread processes driven by topography, orientation of watersheds or dominant winds at local level, contributing to understanding the feedback with land cover/use, climate and biophysical characteristics at regional level to develop strategies for fire management.</p><p><strong>Acknowledges:</strong> J.N is funded by the 'Women in Research'-fellowship program (WWU Münster) and within the context of BIOBRAS Project “Research-based learning in neglected biodiverse ecosystems of Brazil”; funding by DAAD (number 57393735); validation dataset was performed under the Andurá project (number 441971/2018–0) funding by CNPq</p>

Factors influencing the development of violent pyroconvection. Part I: fire size and stability

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel L. Badlan ◽  
Jason J. Sharples ◽  
Jason P. Evans ◽  
Rick H. D. McRae
Keyword(s):  
Fire Size ◽  
Factors Influencing
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