Abstract
The Brazilian Cerrado is significantly affected by anthropic fires every year, which makes the region an important source of pyrogenic emissions. This study aims at generating improved 1 km monthly burned area maps for Cerrado based on remote-sensed information. The algorithm relies on a burn-sensitive vegetation index based on MODIS daily values of near and middle infrared reflectance and makes use of active fire detection from multiple sensors. Validation is performed using reference burned area (BA) maps derived from Landsat imagery. Results are also compared with MODIS standard BA products. A monthly BA database for the Brazilian Cerrado is generated covering the period 2005–2014. Estimated value of BA is 1.3 times larger than the value derived from reference data, making the product suitable for applications in fire emission studies and ecosystem management. As expected the intra and inter-annual variability of estimated BA over the Brazilian Cerrado is in agreement with the regime of precipitation. This work represents the first step towards setting up a regional database of BA for Brazil to be developed in the framework of BrFLAS, an R and D project in the areas of fire emissions and ecosystem management planning.
Highlights
The global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years [1]
That overall accuracy (OA) satisfies the principle of equivalence of the events [61], giving equal credit for burned and unburned classes
This property is not always desirable, in the case of burned area (BA) detection studies where the burned event is more relevant than the non-occurrence event
Summary
The global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least 800,000 years [1]. Fossil fuel emissions play a primary role in the increase, emissions from changes in land use, such as deforestation and vegetation fires cannot be disregarded. In Brazil, the primary source of greenhouse gases, as well as of aerosols and trace gases, has been the conversion of natural vegetation to pasture and agriculture using fire practices [2]. Lower moisture conditions enable the use of fire as a tool for land management during the dry season [3]. A comprehensive description of the use of fire in Brazil may be found in [5]
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