Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products
Global estimates of burned areas, enabled by the wide-open access to the standard data products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), are heavily relied on by scientists and managers studying issues related to wildfire occurrence and its worldwide consequences. While these...
Published in: | Remote Sensing |
---|---|
Main Authors: | , , , |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | English |
Published: |
MDPI AG
2021
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145 https://doaj.org/article/f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 |
id |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 |
---|---|
record_format |
openpolar |
spelling |
ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 2023-05-15T15:01:47+02:00 Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products Dong Chen Varada Shevade Allison Baer Tatiana V. Loboda 2021-10-01T00:00:00Z https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145 https://doaj.org/article/f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 EN eng MDPI AG https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/20/4145 https://doaj.org/toc/2072-4292 doi:10.3390/rs13204145 2072-4292 https://doaj.org/article/f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 Remote Sensing, Vol 13, Iss 4145, p 4145 (2021) wildfire disturbance Arctic boreal forests tundra MODIS Science Q article 2021 ftdoajarticles https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145 2022-12-31T09:43:17Z Global estimates of burned areas, enabled by the wide-open access to the standard data products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), are heavily relied on by scientists and managers studying issues related to wildfire occurrence and its worldwide consequences. While these datasets, particularly the MODIS MCD64A1 product, have fundamentally improved our understanding of wildfire regimes at the global scale, their performance may be less reliable in certain regions due to a series of region- or ecosystem-specific challenges. Previous studies have indicated that global burned area products tend to underestimate the extent of the burned area within some parts of the boreal domain. Despite this, global products are still being regularly used by research activities and management efforts in the northern regions, likely due to a lack of understanding of the spatial scale of their Arctic-specific limitations, as well as an absence of more reliable alternative products. In this study, we evaluated the performance of two widely used global burned area products, MCD64A1 and FireCCI51, in the circumpolar boreal forests and tundra between 2001 and 2015. Our two-step evaluation shows that MCD64A1 has high commission and omission errors in mapping burned areas in the boreal forests and tundra regions in North America. The omission error overshadows the commission error, leading to MCD64A1 considerably underestimating burned areas in these high northern latitude domains. Based on our estimation, MCD64A1 missed nearly half the total burned areas in the Alaskan and Canadian boreal forests and the tundra during the 15-year period, amounting to an area (74,768 km 2 ) that is equivalent to the land area of the United States state of South Carolina. While the FireCCI51 product performs much better than MCD64A1 in terms of commission error, we found that it also missed about 40% of burned areas in North America north of 60° N between 2001 and 2015. Our intercomparison of MCD64A1 and FireCCI51 with a ... Article in Journal/Newspaper Arctic Tundra Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles Arctic Remote Sensing 13 20 4145 |
institution |
Open Polar |
collection |
Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
op_collection_id |
ftdoajarticles |
language |
English |
topic |
wildfire disturbance Arctic boreal forests tundra MODIS Science Q |
spellingShingle |
wildfire disturbance Arctic boreal forests tundra MODIS Science Q Dong Chen Varada Shevade Allison Baer Tatiana V. Loboda Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
topic_facet |
wildfire disturbance Arctic boreal forests tundra MODIS Science Q |
description |
Global estimates of burned areas, enabled by the wide-open access to the standard data products from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), are heavily relied on by scientists and managers studying issues related to wildfire occurrence and its worldwide consequences. While these datasets, particularly the MODIS MCD64A1 product, have fundamentally improved our understanding of wildfire regimes at the global scale, their performance may be less reliable in certain regions due to a series of region- or ecosystem-specific challenges. Previous studies have indicated that global burned area products tend to underestimate the extent of the burned area within some parts of the boreal domain. Despite this, global products are still being regularly used by research activities and management efforts in the northern regions, likely due to a lack of understanding of the spatial scale of their Arctic-specific limitations, as well as an absence of more reliable alternative products. In this study, we evaluated the performance of two widely used global burned area products, MCD64A1 and FireCCI51, in the circumpolar boreal forests and tundra between 2001 and 2015. Our two-step evaluation shows that MCD64A1 has high commission and omission errors in mapping burned areas in the boreal forests and tundra regions in North America. The omission error overshadows the commission error, leading to MCD64A1 considerably underestimating burned areas in these high northern latitude domains. Based on our estimation, MCD64A1 missed nearly half the total burned areas in the Alaskan and Canadian boreal forests and the tundra during the 15-year period, amounting to an area (74,768 km 2 ) that is equivalent to the land area of the United States state of South Carolina. While the FireCCI51 product performs much better than MCD64A1 in terms of commission error, we found that it also missed about 40% of burned areas in North America north of 60° N between 2001 and 2015. Our intercomparison of MCD64A1 and FireCCI51 with a ... |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Dong Chen Varada Shevade Allison Baer Tatiana V. Loboda |
author_facet |
Dong Chen Varada Shevade Allison Baer Tatiana V. Loboda |
author_sort |
Dong Chen |
title |
Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
title_short |
Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
title_full |
Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
title_fullStr |
Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
title_full_unstemmed |
Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products |
title_sort |
missing burns in the high northern latitudes: the case for regionally focused burned area products |
publisher |
MDPI AG |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145 https://doaj.org/article/f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 |
geographic |
Arctic |
geographic_facet |
Arctic |
genre |
Arctic Tundra |
genre_facet |
Arctic Tundra |
op_source |
Remote Sensing, Vol 13, Iss 4145, p 4145 (2021) |
op_relation |
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/20/4145 https://doaj.org/toc/2072-4292 doi:10.3390/rs13204145 2072-4292 https://doaj.org/article/f7ac8918e4c34e3aad8946128ae136c5 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145 |
container_title |
Remote Sensing |
container_volume |
13 |
container_issue |
20 |
container_start_page |
4145 |
_version_ |
1766333800186380288 |