Abstract
Quantifying forest fires remain a challenging task for the implementation of public policies aimed to mitigate climate change. In this paper, we propose a new method to provide an annual burned area map of Mato Grosso State located in the Brazilian Amazon region, taking advantage of the high spatial and temporal resolution sensors. The method consists of generating the vegetation, soil, and shade fraction images by applying the Linear Spectral Mixing Model (LSMM) to the Landsat-8 OLI (Operational Land Imager), PROBA-V (Project for On-Board Autonomy–Vegetation), and Suomi NPP-VIIRS (National Polar-Orbiting Partnership-Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) datasets. The shade fraction images highlight the burned areas, in which values are represented by low reflectance of ground targets, and the mapping was performed using an unsupervised classifier. Burned areas were evaluated in terms of land use and land cover classes over the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes in the Mato Grosso State. Our results showed that most of the burned areas occurred in non-forested areas (66.57%) and old deforestation (21.54%). However, burned areas over forestlands (11.03%), causing forest degradation, reached more than double compared with burned areas identified in consolidated croplands (5.32%). The results obtained were validated using the Sentinel-2 data and compared with active fire data and existing global burned areas products, such as the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer product) MCD64A1 and MCD45A1, and Fire CCI (ESA Climate Change Initiative) products. Although there is a good visual agreement among the analyzed products, the areas estimated were quite different. Our results presented correlation of 51% with Sentinel-2 and agreement of r2 = 0.31, r2 = 0.29, and r2 = 0.43 with MCD64A1, MCD45A1, and Fire CCI products, respectively. However, considering the active fire data, it was achieved the better performance between active fire presence and burn mapping (92%). The proposed method provided a general perspective about the patterns of fire in various biomes of Mato Grosso State, Brazil, that are important for the environmental studies, specially related to fire severity, regeneration, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Highlights
In Brazil, burning of vegetation biomass is a management practice used to create and to maintain cattle pasture and to expand agricultural frontier [1]
The results showed that in each ecosystem, the burned areas (BA) estimates were within 15% compared to the high-resolution base, presenting a strong potential for regional and ecosystem-specific burned area mapping applications
The results pointed out that the most burned area estimate is located in non-Forest, reaching 66.57% (~61 thousand km2) of the total area mapped by the final composite
Summary
In Brazil, burning of vegetation biomass is a management practice used to create and to maintain cattle pasture and to expand agricultural frontier [1]. The burning practice is widely used in the production process in the Brazilian Amazon (rainforest) and Cerrado (savanna) biomes and is a factor that drives the agricultural expansion in these regions. Farmers burn their land to convert forests to cropland or pasture, to control the spread of weeds, pests, or diseases, and to stimulate pasture regrowth, as well [2,3,4,5,6]. Non-anthropogenic factors, such as lightning, are responsible for burning
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
