The ERS-2 ATSR-2 World Fire Atlas and the ERS-2 ATSR-2 World Burnt Surface Atlas projects

• Main Authors: Olivier Arino, Muriel Simon, Isidoro Piccolini, Jean-michel Rosaz
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Tundra
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.459.845; http://dup.esrin.esa.int/wfa/Arino2001Aussois.pdf

The 1997s Kyoto convention revealed to the general public that industrial and agriculture emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases threaten to change climate rapidly. Nigh time data from the ERS-2 ATSR-2 allows to monitor agricultural fires and wildfires at global scale. A global Fire Atlas has been developed, implemented and by 25 scientists led by IGBP-DIS. The Atlas currently covers data from end 1995 to early 2000. The detection algorithm and the validation of the products will be described. Several applications in the field of trace gas emissions, forest management, and aerosol emissions have been conducted and are described. The new GLOBSCAR project for production of World Burnt Surfaces Atlas using the daytime ATSR-2 images is described: a set of algorithms capable of detecting burnt areas from vegetation fires at a global scale, across the major biomes have been tested in order to adopt a single algorithm. The different algorithm limitations are quantified considering the errors of commission/omission and over/under estimation of burnt areas. The main ecosystems studied were the dense humid tropical forest, the savanna-forest interface, Mediterranean forest and shrub land, boreal forest and tundra. Algorithm evaluation was performed against high resolution satellite imagery (mostly from Landsat TM) as reference data. Following GOFC recommendation, ESA is implementing a demonstration Atlas production for the millenium year by summer 2001. 1.