A Burned Area Mapping Algorithm for Chinese FengYun-3 MERSI Satellite Data

Tianchan Shan,Changlin Wang,Qinchun Wu,Wei Wu,Bin Li,Fang Chen,Zhengyang Lin,Zeeshan Shirazi,Bo Yu

doi:10.3390/rs9070736

Abstract

Biomass burning is a worldwide phenomenon, which emits large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and strongly influences the environment. Burned area is an important parameter in modeling the impacts of biomass burning on the climate and ecosystem. The Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI) onboard FengYun-3C (FY-3C) has shown great potential for burned area mapping research, but there is still a lack of relevant studies and applications. This paper describes an automated burned area mapping algorithm that was developed using daily MERSI data. The algorithm employs time-series analysis and multi-temporal 1000-m resolution data to obtain seed pixels. To identify the burned pixels automatically, region growing and Support Vector Machine) methods have been used together with 250-m resolution data. The algorithm was tested by applying it in two experimental areas, and the accuracy of the results was evaluated by comparing them to reference burned area maps, which were interpreted manually using Landsat 8 OLI data and the MODIS MCD64A1 burned area product. The results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm was able to improve the burned area mapping accuracy at the two study sites.

Highlights

Biomass burning is a naturally reoccurring worldwide phenomenon
The results obtained suggest that the algorithm using the 250-m resolution input data makes a better distinction between burned pixels and unburned pixels compared to the MODIS burned area product, which uses 1000-m resolution data as input data
As Medium Resolution Spectral Imager (MERSI) data suffer from a geo-location problem, pixels that are less likely to be detected as burned area need to be removed by morphological erosion using a 3 × 3 structuring element

Summary

Introduction

Biomass burning is a naturally reoccurring worldwide phenomenon. It has environmental and ecological consequences such as effects on the global carbon budget, changes to the global carbon cycle, and disruption of ecosystem succession [1]. The environmental, economic, and social impacts of biomass burning have raised concerns among many policy- and decision-makers and have highlighted the need to manage them. Accurate and actionable information on different aspects of fires is needed for policy- and management-related issues. The spatial and temporal distribution of fires is an important yet basic form of information that requires accurate mapping techniques [2]. In the past few decades, it has been used quite extensively in burned area mapping studies. For local-scale burned area mapping, medium resolution satellite sensors such as the Thematic

Results

Discussion

Conclusion