Assigning dates and identifying areas affected by fires in Portugal based on MODIS data.

An automated procedure is here presented that allows identifying and dating burned areas in Portugal using values of daily reflectance from near-infrared and middle-infrared bands, as obtained from the MODIS instrument. The algorithm detects persistent changes in monthly composites of the so-called (V,W) Burn-Sensitive Index and the day of maximum change in daily time series of W is in turn identified as the day of the burning event. The procedure is tested for 2005, the second worst fire season ever recorded in Portugal. Comparison between the obtained burned area map and the reference derived from Landsat imagery resulted in a Proportion Correct of 95.6%. Despite being applied only to the months of August and September, the algorithm is able to identify almost two-thirds of all scars that have occurred during the entire year of 2005. An assessment of the temporal accuracy of the dating procedure was also conducted, showing that 75% of estimated dates presented deviations between -5 and 5 days from dates of hotspots derived from the MODIS instrument. Information about location and date of burning events as provided by the proposed procedure may be viewed as complementary to the currently available official maps based on end-of-season Landsat imagery.

Atmospheric conditions associated with extreme fire activity in the Western Mediterranean region.

Active fire information provided by TERRA and AQUA instruments on-board sun-synchronous polar MODIS platform is used to describe fire activity in the Western Mediterranean and to identify and characterize the synoptic patterns of several meteorological fields associated with the occurrence of extreme fire activity episodes (EEs). The spatial distribution of the fire pixels during the period of 2003-2012 leads to the identification of two most affected sub-regions, namely the Northern and Western parts of the Iberian Peninsula (NWIP) and Northern Africa (NAFR). The temporal distribution of the fire pixels in these two sub-regions is characterized by: (i) high and non-concurrent inter- and intra-annual variability with maximum values during the summer of 2003 and 2005 in NWIP and 2007 and 2012 in NAFR; and, (ii) high intra-annual variability dominated by a prominent annual cycle with a main peak centred in August in both sub-regions and a less pronounced secondary peak in March only evident in NWIP region. The 34 EEs identified were grouped according to the location, period of occurrence and spatial configuration of the associated synoptic patterns into 3 clusters (NWIP-summer, NWIP-winter and NAFR-summer). Results from the composite analysis reveal similar fire weather conditions (statistically significant positive anomalies of air temperature and negative anomalies of air relative humidity) but associated with different circulation patterns at lower and mid-levels of the atmosphere associated with the occurrence of EEs in each cluster of the Western Mediterranean region.

Assigning dates and identifying areas affected by fires in Portugal based on MODIS data

ABSTRACT An automated procedure is here presented that allows identifying and dating burned areas in Portugal using values of daily reflectance from near-infrared and middle-infrared bands, as obtained from the MODIS instrument. The algorithm detects persistent changes in monthly composites of the so-called (V,W) Burn-Sensitive Index and the day of maximum change in daily time series of W is in turn identified as the day of the burning event. The procedure is tested for 2005, the second worst fire season ever recorded in Portugal. Comparison between the obtained burned area map and the reference derived from Landsat imagery resulted in a Proportion Correct of 95.6%. Despite being applied only to the months of August and September, the algorithm is able to identify almost two-thirds of all scars that have occurred during the entire year of 2005. An assessment of the temporal accuracy of the dating procedure was also conducted, showing that 75% of estimated dates presented deviations between -5 and 5 days from dates of hotspots derived from the MODIS instrument. Information about location and date of burning events as provided by the proposed procedure may be viewed as complementary to the currently available official maps based on end-of-season Landsat imagery.