Sovremennye problemy distantsionnogo zondirovaniya Zemli iz kosmosa, 2005, Issue 2, Vol. 2, pp. 422-427
COMPARISON OF FIRE DETECTION AND QUANTITATIVE
CHARACTERISATION BY MODIS AND BIRD
B. Zhukov
1, D. Oertel
2, E. Lorenz
2, Ya. Ziman
3, I. Csiszar
41 DLR Optical Information Systems
on leave from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, D-12489 Berlin, Rutherfordstr. 2
2 DLR Optical Information Systems, D-12489 Berlin, Rutherfordstr. 2
3 Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 117997 Moscow, Profsoyuznaya 84/32
4 University of Maryland, Department of Geography, College Park, MD, USA
Data of the spectroradiometers MODIS on the Terra and Aqua satellites, which are obtained on a global scale
4 times a day, are widely used for global and regional monitoring of active fires. A disadvantage of MODIS is a relatively
low resolution of 1 km. We investigated the effect of the resolution on the recognition of fire fronts and on the
estimation of their characteristics, as well as on the estimation of the total fire radiative power (FRP) emitted from a
fire scene. For this purpose, we compared images of fire scenes in Siberia, Portugal and Australia that were obtained
nearly simultaneously by MODIS and by the dedicated small satellite BIRD, which provides a resolution of 370 m in
its infrared channels and allows the detection of fires with an area a factor of 7 smaller than MODIS. The results show
that BIRD allows the recognition of fire fronts and the estimation of their characteristics, while in the MODIS data
fire fronts are usually not clearly distinguished. On the other hand, MODIS proves to be a marginally adequate sensor
for the estimation of the total FRP in fire scenes, which is related to the rates of biomass burning and of gas and aerosol
emissions. Only in cases of fires with a relatively small front depth, which is typical for bush fires in Australia,
MODIS may significantly underestimate the FRP by a factor of 1.8 compared to the BIRD-based FRP estimates. As a
conclusion, it is recommended to combine the data of wide swath sensors, such as MODIS and of high-resolution instruments
of the BIRD type for effective fire monitoring from space.
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