A Comparison of Burned Area Time Series in the Alaskan Boreal Forests from Different Remote Sensing Products

Abstract

Alaska’s boreal region stores large amounts of carbon both in its woodlands and in the grounds that sustain them. Any alteration to the fire system that has naturally regulated the region’s ecology for centuries poses a concern regarding global climate change. Satellite-based remote sensors are key to analyzing those spatial and temporal patterns of fire occurrence. This paper compiles four burned area (BA) time series based on remote sensing imagery for the Alaska region between 1982–2015: Burned Areas Boundaries Dataset-Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (BABD-MTBS) derived from Landsat sensors, Fire Climate Change Initiative (Fire_CCI) (2001–2015) and Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Direct Broadcast Monthly Burned Area Product (MCD64A1) (2000–2015) with MODIS data, and Burned Area-Long-Term Data Record (BA-LTDR) using Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer LTDR (AVHRR-LTDR) dataset. All products were analyzed and compared against one another, and their accuracy was assessed through reference data obtained by the Alaskan Fire Service (AFS). The BABD-MTBS product, with the highest spatial resolution (30 m), shows the best overall estimation of BA (81%), however, for the years before 2000 (pre-MODIS era), the BA sensed by this product was only 44.3%, against the 55.5% obtained by the BA-LTDR product with a lower spatial resolution (5 km). In contrast, for the MODIS era (after 2000), BABD-MTBS virtually matches the reference data (98.5%), while the other three time series showed similar results of around 60%. Based on the theoretical limits of their corresponding Pareto boundaries, the lower resolution BA products could be improved, although those based on MODIS data are currently limited by the algorithm’s reliance on the active fire MODIS product, with a 1 km nominal spatial resolution. The large inter-annual variation found in the commission and omission errors in this study suggests that for a fair assessment of the accuracy of any BA product, all available reference data for space and time should be considered and should not be carried out by selective sampling.

Global biomass burning fuel consumption and emissions at 500 m spatial resolution based on the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED)

“…In combination with the 500 m emissions model described by van Wees and van der Werf (2019), they found a doubling of fire emissions based on Sentinel-2 MSI burned area as compared to MODIS burned area. Other Landsat and Sentinel-2-based burned area products report similar findings, with substantial increases in detected burned area as compared to the MODIS burnedarea product for, for example, Indonesia for the year 2019 (+50 % additional burned area) (Gaveau et al, 2021), Alaska for 2000-2015 (+53 %) (Moreno-Ruiz et al, 2019), the conterminous United States for 2003-2018 (+56 %) (Hawbaker et al, 2020), a study region in southern Africa for July 2016 (+73 %) (Roy et al, 2019), and the Russian 2020 spring fire season (+500 %) (Glushkov et al, 2021). To a lesser extent, sub-500 m burned area products may give lower burned area and emissions in regions with many large fires because of better accounting for landscape heterogeneity, for example, in regions with many small water bodies such as the Canadian Shield (Walker et al, 2018).…”

MODIS Sensor Capability to Burned Area Mapping—Assessment of Performance and Improvements Provided by the Latest Standard Products in Boreal Regions

“…It is necessary to understand the uncertainty of these products before incorporating them as input data into global carbon, vegetation or climate models, as well as for the management of all the wildfire phases. Numerous prior studies have evaluated the behavior of the MODIS sensor-derived products analyzed in this study, both as part of ESA’s Fire Climate Change Initiative Project and in the different versions [ 13 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 ] of the MODIS Direct Broadcast Monthly Burned Area Product. However, many of these works construct reference fire perimeters using images from better spatial resolution sensors such as Landsat TM/ETM or Sentinel-2, and which are limited to short time periods, usually one or several years, due to the difficulty in creating larger reference sets.…”

Albedo-Induced Global Warming Impact at Multiple Temporal Scales within an Upper Midwest USA Watershed

“…There is also uncertainty associated with the datasets employed in this study. For example, the MODIS MCD43 albedo product has a pixel with a nominal spatial resolution of 500 × 500 m, which has been shown not to properly match the effective spatial resolution (usually much higher than the nominal one [58,59]). However, previous attempts by researchers to analyze the effective spatial resolution of the MODIS albedo product [60,61] were limited to a single homogeneous area.…”