Global burned area maps from MERIS

Abstract

Biomass burning is a global scale phenomenon that affects annually around 3.5 million Km2. This phenomenon has a very critical relevance for vegetation dynamics, atmospheric emissions and carbon budgets, increasingly affecting human lives and property, particularly in catastrophic conditions (heat waves, drought, strong winds). Properly characterizing burned areas on a global scale has become a relevant factor when studying these processes. The Fire CCI project, in the framework of the ESA’s Climate Change Initiative, aims at providing consistent time series of burned areas (BA) globally, over the period 1995 to 2009. Global BA products are obtained by merging information from three sensors: the ATSR series, VEGETATION and MERIS. In this case, the algorithm developed to obtain burned areas from the MERIS sensor will be presented. The MERIS BA algorithm is based on MERIS reflectance bands, spectral indices and both post-fire and multi-temporal analysis controlled by HS locations. BA detection is performed in a two phase process: the first one aims to detect seed pixels while the second one will develop contextual criteria around these seed pixels. Global BA maps have been obtained with the MERIS algorithm for years 2006 to 2008.