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

Yuyun Fu,Jiheng Hu,Osvaldo Valeria,Xuewen Wang,Raphaël D Chavardès,Yipu Wang,Rui Li,Yves Bergeron

doi:10.3390/rs12182870

Abstract

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.

Highlights

Satellite observation with relatively high spatiotemporal resolution and broad spatial coverage is often used to investigate fire impacts on vegetation, atmosphere, climate, air quality, and human society [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Accuracy of fire detection and fire radiative power (FRP) from moderate-resolution satellite sensors impede the studies on fire regimes and FRP-based fire emissions estimation
We conducted a comprehensive comparison of fire detection and FRP retrieval between Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) 375-m and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 1-km fire products in Northeast Asia using data from 2012 to 2017

Summary

Introduction

Satellite observation with relatively high spatiotemporal resolution and broad spatial coverage is often used to investigate fire impacts on vegetation, atmosphere, climate, air quality, and human society [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Regional to global scale observation of vegetation fires (e.g., fire detection, fire intensity, burned area) is possible via satellite sensors including the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on Aqua and Terra, the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on NOAA, the Thematic Mapper/Enhance Thematic Mapper Plus (TM/ETM+) on Landsat, and sensors on the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and Himawari-8 satellite [5,7,8,9] Among these sensors, fire observation, such as fire detection and fire radiative power (FRP) [10,11], is extensively applied based on the MODIS 1-km active fire products. We hypothesize that satellite fire observation using a finer spatial resolution and stronger fire sensitivity (e.g., to cooler fires) than MODIS could mitigate these problems

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