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Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and...
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Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and Atmosphere

A special issue of Fire (ISSN 2571-6255).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2018) | Viewed by 23006

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Martin Wooster

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Earth Observation Science, ​​NERC National Center for Earth Observation & Department of Geography, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Interests: local to global biomass burning quantification and impacts; active fire remote sensing; fire radiative power metrics; smoke emissions measurements; fire and air quality; in situ and UAV measurements
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Luigi Boschetti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Natural Resources and Society, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA
Interests: global biomass; burning remote sensing of fire; forest monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) has operated since 1997, and has, as its overall objective, to improve the quality and availability of observations of forests and land cover at regional and global scales, to produce useful, timely and validated informational products from these data for a wide variety of users, and to promote international networks for data access, data sharing, and international collaboration. GOFC-GOLD operates a series of themes, including the GOFC-GOLD ‘Fire’ theme, which aims at refining and articulating the international requirements for fire related observations, and making the best possible use of fire products from existing and future satellite observing systems, for fire management, policy decision-making and Earth system science and global change research.

The GOFC-GOLD Fire Implementation Team (IT) is an international forum that, together with the Reginal Networks, leads the GOFC-GOLD Fire Theme activities:

  • to ensure the provision of long-term, systematic satellite observations necessary for the production of a full suite of fire products.
  • to bring together fire data providers and fire data users to exchange information on capabilities and needs.
  • to provide within the regional network a forum for users and researchers operating in (or with an interest in) a common geographic area, and represent a link between national agencies and user groups and the global user/producer community.

The GOFC-GOLD Fire Implementation Team (IT) meets at least once a year, and this special issue in the inaugural year of FIRE stems from the meeting held in November 2017 (Windsor, United Kingdom). At this meeting, much of the current state-of-the-art in the use of remotely-sensed data to detect active fire and burned areas was reviewed, and the use of these products to estimate the emissions to the atmosphere that stem from fire activity and to characterize the impact of fires on landscapes and ecology was considered. We invite you to submit articles on these topics, and others related to the remote sensing of landscape fire for this Special Issue, including but not limited to:

  • Derivation and use of active fire mapping and fire radiative power and energy measures
  • Burned area mapping algorithms and dataset derivation
  • Validation of satellite-derived fire information
  • Fire emissions calculations and fire emissions inventory comparison and evaluation
  • Field or laboratory remote sensing of fire and/or fire emissions characteristics
  • Derivation of parameters used within fire emissions models and/or inventories driven by EO
  • Remote sensing of vegetation recovery after fire disturbance
  • Use of UAV’s for study of landscape fires
  • Fire ecology studies making use of remotely sensed information
  • Documented user’s need for fire information, with particular regard to the experience of the regional networks

Authors are required to check and follow specific Instructions to Authors.

Prof. Martin Wooster
Dr. Luigi Boschetti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 1609 KiB  
Article
Influence of Satellite Sensor Pixel Size and Overpass Time on Undercounting of Cerrado/Savannah Landscape-Scale Fire Radiative Power (FRP): An Assessment Using the MODIS Airborne Simulator
by Samuel Sperling, Martin J. Wooster and Bruce D. Malamud
Fire 2020, 3(2), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3020011 - 11 May 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3709
Abstract
The fire radiative power (FRP) of active fires (AFs) is routinely assessed with spaceborne sensors. MODIS is commonly used, and its 1 km nadir pixel size provides a minimum per-pixel FRP detection limit of ~5–8 MW, leading to undercounting of AF pixels with [...] Read more.
The fire radiative power (FRP) of active fires (AFs) is routinely assessed with spaceborne sensors. MODIS is commonly used, and its 1 km nadir pixel size provides a minimum per-pixel FRP detection limit of ~5–8 MW, leading to undercounting of AF pixels with FRPs of less than around 10 MW. Since most biomes show increasing AF pixel frequencies with decreasing FRP, this results in MODIS failing to detect many fires burning when it overpasses. However, the exact magnitude of the landscape-scale FRP underestimation induced by this type of AF undercounting remains poorly understood, as does its sensitivity to sensor pixel size and overpass time. We investigate these issues using both 1 km spaceborne MODIS data and 50 m MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS) observations of the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like environment covering 2 million km2 (>20%) of Brazil where fires are a frequent occurrence. The MAS data were collected during the 1995 SCAR-B experiment, and are able to be spatially degraded to simulate data from sensors with a wide variety of pixel sizes. We explore multiple versions of these MAS data to deliver recommendations for future satellite sensor design, aiming to discover the most effective sensor characteristics that provide negligible pixel-area related FRP underestimation whilst keeping pixels large enough to deliver relatively wide swath widths. We confirm earlier analyses showing 1 km MODIS-type observations fail to detect a very significant number of active fires, and find the degree of undercounting gets worse away from the early afternoon diurnal fire cycle peak (~ 15:00 local time). However, the effect of these undetected fires on the assessment of total landscape-scale FRP is far less significant, since they are mostly low FRP fires. Using two different approaches we estimate that the MODIS-type 1 km data underestimates landscape scale FRP by around a third, and that whilst the degree of underestimation worsens away from the diurnal fire cycle peak the effect of this maybe less important since there are far fewer fires present. MAS data degraded to a 200 m spatial resolution provides landscape-scale FRP totals almost indistinguishable from those calculated with the original 50 m MAS observations, and still provides a pixel size consistent with a wide swath imaging instrument. Our work provides a potentially useful guide for future mission developers aiming at active fire and FRP applications, and we conclude that such missions need operate at spatial resolutions no higher than 200 m if they rely on cooled, low-noise IR detectors. Further work confirming this for fire-affected biomes beyond the savannah-type environments studied here is recommended. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and Atmosphere)
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24 pages, 4429 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Surface Fire in Savannah Systems in the Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa, on the Backscatter of C-Band Sentinel-1 Images
by Renaud Mathieu, Russell Main, David P. Roy, Laven Naidoo and Hannah Yang
Fire 2019, 2(3), 37; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire2030037 - 27 Jun 2019
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5927
Abstract
Savannahs are mixed woody-grass communities where low-intensity surface fires are common, affecting mostly the grass layer and rarely damaging trees. We investigated the effect of surface fires in a savannah system in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, on the backscatter of synthetic [...] Read more.
Savannahs are mixed woody-grass communities where low-intensity surface fires are common, affecting mostly the grass layer and rarely damaging trees. We investigated the effect of surface fires in a savannah system in the Kruger National Park, South Africa, on the backscatter of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) C-band Sentinel-1A images. Pre-fire and post-fire dual polarized (VH, VV) C-band backscatter values were examined for 30 burn events. For all events, a systematic backscatter decrease from pre-fire to post-fire conditions was observed, with mean backscatter decreases of 1.61 dB and 0.99 dB for VH and VV, respectively. A total of 90% and 75% of the burn events showed a decrease in VH and VV backscatter greater than 0.43 dB, the overall absolute radiometric of Sentinel-1A products. The VH data were, overall, 1.7 times more sensitive to surface fire effects than the VV data. C-band data are likely sensitive to a reduction in grass biomass typical of surface fires, as well as in grass/soil moisture levels. Early season fires had higher backscatter decreases due to greater early season moisture conditions. For region with more than 30% woody cover, the effect of fire on the C-band backscatter was reduced. Denser woody communities tend to produce lower grass fuel load and less intense surface fires, and limit the penetration of C-band microwaves to the ground where most savannah fires and associated effects occur. This research provides evidence that C-band space-borne SAR is sensitive to the effects of surface-level fires in southern African savannahs. The unique availability of frequent and spatially detailed C-band data from the Sentinel-1 SAR constellation provide new opportunities for burned area mapping and systematic monitoring in savannahs systems, for instance, for fine-scale fire propagation studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and Atmosphere)
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16 pages, 9804 KiB  
Article
Satellite Detection Limitations of Sub-Canopy Smouldering Wildfires in the North American Boreal Forest
by Joshua M. Johnston, Lynn M. Johnston, Martin J. Wooster, Alison Brookes, Colin McFayden and Alan S. Cantin
Fire 2018, 1(2), 28; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire1020028 - 10 Aug 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5384
Abstract
We develop a simulation model for prediction of forest canopy interception of upwelling fire radiated energy from sub-canopy smouldering vegetation fires. We apply this model spatially across the North American boreal forest in order to map minimum detectable sub-canopy smouldering fire size for [...] Read more.
We develop a simulation model for prediction of forest canopy interception of upwelling fire radiated energy from sub-canopy smouldering vegetation fires. We apply this model spatially across the North American boreal forest in order to map minimum detectable sub-canopy smouldering fire size for three satellite fire detection systems (sensor and algorithm), broadly representative of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). We evaluate our results according to fire management requirements for “early detection” of wildland fires. In comparison to the historic fire archive (Canadian National Fire Database, 1980–2017), satellite data with a 1000 m pixel size used with an algorithm having a minimum MWIR channel BT elevation threshold of 5 and 3 K above background (e.g., MODIS or SLSTR) proves incapable of providing a sub-0.2 ha smouldering fire detection 70% and 45% of the time respectively, even assuming that the sensor overpassed the relevant location within the correct time window. By contrast, reducing the pixel area by an order of magnitude (e.g., 375 m pixels of VIIRS) and using a 3.5 K active fire detection threshold offers the potential for successfully detecting all fires when they are still below 0.2 ha. Our results represent a ‘theoretical best performance’ of remote sensing systems to detect sub-canopy smoldering fires early in their lifetime. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and Atmosphere)
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28 pages, 13591 KiB  
Article
Fire Severity and Vegetation Recovery on Mine Site Rehabilitation Using WorldView-3 Imagery
by Phillip McKenna, Stuart Phinn and Peter D. Erskine
Fire 2018, 1(2), 22; https://doi.org/10.3390/fire1020022 - 03 Jul 2018
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 7312
Abstract
As open-cut coal mines progress towards closure, mining companies have an obligation to provide certainty to stakeholders that their rehabilitated landscapes have the capacity to withstand future disturbance impacts such as fire and drought. This paper describes the assessment of fire severity and [...] Read more.
As open-cut coal mines progress towards closure, mining companies have an obligation to provide certainty to stakeholders that their rehabilitated landscapes have the capacity to withstand future disturbance impacts such as fire and drought. This paper describes the assessment of fire severity and recovery using WorldView-3 spectral indices following an experimental fire in a 19- to 21-year old coal mine rehabilitation in semi-arid Central Queensland, Australia. In a highly heterogeneous reconstructed environment, the differenced Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (dNDVI) outperformed the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) with an overall map accuracy of 65% and 58%, respectively. The combination of red and near infra-red multispectral bands proved more effective at classifying severity compared with the shortwave infra-red, particularly when pre-fire imagery was dominated by highly cured grasses (>70%) and post-fire imagery contained a high coverage of residual ash. Recovery trends using spectral indices demonstrate the trajectory towards vegetation recovery, with 62% of the burnt site demonstrating high regrowth in the first two years following fire. This is supported by in situ recovery trends of understory biomass suggesting that under the study conditions, the rehabilitated site has the capacity to withstand impacts from a wildfire and recover to pre-fire levels. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing of Fire and Its Impact on Land and Atmosphere)
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