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Mapping of burnt areas at global level: current possibilities offered by optical Earth Observation Systems J-M. Grégoire 1 & P. A. Brivio 2 1 Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit - Space Applications Institute - Joint Research Centre
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Mapping of burnt areas at global level: current possibilities offered by optical Earth Observation Systems J-M. Grégoire 1 & P. A. Brivio 2 1 Global Vegetation Monitoring Unit - Space Applications Institute - Joint Research Centre 2 Telerilevamento - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Milano January 31st 2001
Why looking at burnt areas at global level ? • Just because we are all a little bit fire-bug ? • Because it’s one of the 4 elements ? • Or because it’s a scientific issue ?
It’s a scientific issue for at least 3 reasons • Fire is a global scale phenomena • It has a direct impact on the vegetation cover type and condition, • with consequences in terms of: • - changes or maintenance of the vegetation cover • - soil erosion • - degradation, or maintenance, of the biodiversity • It has a direct impact on the chemistry of the lower troposphere, with • 3 major consequences: • - the emission of large quantities of green house gases and of aerosols • - the modification of the radiative transfer at the biosphere-atmosphere • interface • - the acidification of precipitations
Vegetation fires A global scale phenomena There is at any time a fire burning somewhere at the surface of the Earth Dwyer et al., 1999, J. of Biogeography
Burning has a direct impact on the vegetation cover type and condition Frequent burning is favouring the fire resistant species Palm savanna - Ivory Coast
Burning has a direct impact on the vegetation cover type and condition Frequent burning is shaping the structure of the vegetation cover Gallery forest - Ivory Coast
Burning has a direct impact on soil erosion Slash and burn agriculture - Vietnam/Laos border Soil is totally unprotected against the heavy storms at the beginning of the rainy season
Burning has a direct impact on the vegetation cover type and condition, with deep impact on the biodiversity Maintenance of a given habitat Destruction of the habitat Suriname Bolivia (Amazon Basin)
Vegetation fires have a direct impact on the chemistry of the lower troposphere • Importance of biomass burning as “ anthropogenic emissions source • of greenhouse gases and aerosols” (Kyoto Protocol) • Species All human sources Biomass burning Global savannas fires • (Tg/yr) (Tg/yr) % (Tg/yr) % • ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • CO2 33700a 13500 40 6070 18 • CO 1600a 680 43 240 15 • CH4 275a 43 16 9 3 • Aerosols 390e 90 23 37 9 • Black carbon 90e 60 67 3 3 • ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- • a: Houghton et al., 1995 • e: Scholes & Andreae, 2000
What is a vegetation fire ? What are we looking at ?
Fire on the ground A narrow fire front running through the savanna Tropical woodland - Northern Australia Wet savanna - Cote d’Ivoire
Fire as seen from low altitude air survey A fire front + a burnt area + a smoke plume Tropical woodland - Central African Republic
Fire as seen from low resolution satellite imagery Northern Australia - June 1st 1999 - 550km x 550km NOAA-AVHRR 4 pm SPOT-VEGETATION 10.30 am
The use of satellite remote sensing see second part by P.A. Brivio file: Insubria_Brivio.ppt
Short-term perspectives • The Global Burnt Area 2000 initiative: GBA-2000 Mapping, from SPOT-VEGETATION S1 imagery, of the areas burnt globally during the year 2000 • The WORLD FIRE WEB Network • A system for globally mapping vegetation fires in near real-time,using the NOAA-AVHRR satellite
GBA 2000: a network approach CSIRO(AU) - UTL(P) - NRI(UK) - CNR(I) - CCRS (CA) - CRG (CA) - IFI (RU) - SAI (EU) 68N - 45E 60N - 60E (IFI) 63N - 81W 44N - 55W (CRG) 62.5N-112W 57N-104.5W (CCRS) 60N - 118E 48N - 140E (IFI) 44N - 10W 36N - 0 (UTL) 55N - 115E 40N - 135E (UTL) 10S - 125E 18S - 146E (GVM) 18N - 93W 7N - 77W (NRI) 18N - 18W 0 - 52E (CNR) 5S - 75W 20S - 45W (UTL) 10S - 22E 28S - 42E (UTL) 11S - 125E 21S - 135E (CSIRO) 17S - 21E 28S - 29E (NRI) GBA test-sites (white rectangles; indicative position), with corresponding geographical coordinates (Ul; LR corners)
The WORLD FIRE WEB Network 18 regional fire monitoring centres Year 2001
Some references Ahern F., et al., 2000, Forest fire monitoring and mapping: a component of Global Observation of Forest Cover. Publications of the European Commission, EUR 19588, Luxembourg, 253 pp. Barbosa P.M., et al., 1999, An assessment of vegetation fire in Africa (1981-1991): burned areas, burned biomass and atmospheric emissions. Global Biogeochemical Cycles,Vol. 13 , No. 04 , p. 933-950. Brivio P. A. e J.-M. Grégoire, 1997, Gli incendi nella fascia tropicale del globo: aspetti metodologici nell'analisi dei dati da satellite. Rivista Italiana di Telerilevamento, n. 11, pp. 17-26. Dwyer E., et al., 1999, Characterization of the spatio-temporal patterns of global fire activity using satellite imagery for the period April 1992 to March 1993. J. of Biogeography, Vol 27, pp 57 – 69. Grégoire J-M. , et al., 1999, Satellite monitoring of vegetation fires for EXPRESSO: Outline of activity and relative importance of the study area in the continental context and global context of biomass burning. J. Geophysical Res, Vol. 104 , D23 , 30,691-30,699. Grégoire J-M., et al., 2000, The SMOKO experiment: development and test of a multi-systems approach to burnt area mapping from optical, thermal and microwave satellite data. Publication of the European Commission, EUR 19596 EN, 74 pp. Stroppiana D., et al., The Global Fire Product: daily fire occurrence, from April 1992 to December 1993, derived from NOAA-AVHRR data. Int. J. of Remote Sensing, Vol. 21, No. 6/7, April 2000, 1279-1288. Thank you to Luigi Boschetti CNR/Milan mapping burnt areas from geostationnary satellites Edward Dywer SARMAP mapping fires from AVHRR Marta Maggi CNR/Milan mapping burnt areas from AVHRR and VGT data Simon Pinnock JRC/Ispra responsible World Fire Web network Daniela Stroppiana JRC/Ispra mapping burnt areas from VGT data and all the friends around the world who contribute to the World Fire Web and Global Burnt Area networks