GIO-GL Lot 1, GMES Initial Operations
Date Issued: 31.05.2016
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Gio Global Land Component - Lot I
”Operation of the Global Land Component”
Framework Service Contract N° 388533 (JRC)
QUALITY ASSESSMENT REPORT
BURNED AREA AND SEASONALITY
COLLECTION 1KM
VERSION 1
Issue I4.00
Organization name of lead contractor for this deliverable: University of Leicester
Book Captain:
Dr. Kevin Tansey
Contributing Authors: Dr. Paul Arellano
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Dissemination Level
PU
PP
RE
CO
Public
Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services)
Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the Commission Services)
Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services)
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Document Release Sheet
Book captain:
Approval:
Kevin Tansey
Date 31.05.2016
Sign
Date 05.07.2016
Sign
Date
Roselyne Lacaze
Endorsement:
Michael Cherlet
Distribution:
Public
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Change Record
Issue/Rev
Date
Page(s)
Description of Change
23.04.2014
All
Step 1: Preliminary Quality Assessment
I1.00
1.00
01.12.2014
All
Step 2: Limited (over 6 months) Quality
Assessment
I2.00
2.00
07.02.2015
All
Step 3: Full (12 months) Quality Assessment
I3.00
3.00
27.05.2015
All
Updated after the external review: add MODIS
data for December 2014
I3.10
3.10
03.07.2015
72
Clarifications in Additional note in Conclusion
I3.11
3.11
31.05.2016
All
Updated for 2015 BA V1 products
I4.00
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Table of Contents
1
Background ................................................................................................................. 11
1.1
Executive Summary .................................................................................................................. 11
1.2
Scope and Objectives ............................................................................................................... 11
1.3
Content of the Document ......................................................................................................... 12
1.4
Related documents .................................................................................................................. 12
1.4.1
1.4.2
1.4.3
1.4.4
Applicable documents ................................................................................................................................ 12
Input............................................................................................................................................................ 12
Output......................................................................................................................................................... 12
External documents .................................................................................................................................... 13
2
Review of Users Requirements ................................................................................... 14
3
Quality Assessment Method ........................................................................................ 16
3.1
Procedure ................................................................................................................................ 16
3.2
Satellite Reference Products .................................................................................................... 17
3.2.1
4
3.3
Continental Comparisons ......................................................................................................... 19
3.4
In-situ Reference Products ....................................................................................................... 20
3.5
Regional/Biome Assessment .................................................................................................... 20
Results ........................................................................................................................ 22
4.1
Verification of Products............................................................................................................ 22
4.2
Comparison of Global Burned Area Products at Continental Level ............................................ 25
4.2.1
4.2.2
4.2.3
4.2.4
4.2.5
4.2.6
4.2.7
5
MODIS-MCD45A1 burned area product ..................................................................................................... 17
North and Central America ......................................................................................................................... 25
South America............................................................................................................................................. 28
Africa and the Arabian Peninsula ................................................................................................................ 31
Europe......................................................................................................................................................... 34
Asia.............................................................................................................................................................. 37
Oceania ....................................................................................................................................................... 40
Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... 43
4.3
Comparison of Global Burned Area Products at Biome Level .................................................... 49
4.4
Comparison with Copernicus Emergency Service Products (EMS) and EFFIS .............................. 52
Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 58
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6
References .................................................................................................................. 60
7
Annex 1 ....................................................................................................................... 61
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Windows subsets Geotiff-MODIS MCD45A1 burned area product ................................. 18
Figure 2: Missed data (Central and South America) of MODIS MCD45A1 during July and
November 2015. December 2015 is missing for all continents ................................................ 18
Figure 3: GL overlapping region between continents (blue-yellow areas) ...................................... 19
Figure 4: Continental windows defined for comparison between GL products and MODIS
MCD45A1 ................................................................................................................................ 20
Figure 5: Global Ecofloristic Zones mapped by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) .................................................................................................................. 21
Figure 6: Number of burned area detections from the MODIS (top) and PROBA-V (lower) products,
over the globe. MODIS has missing data for Central and South America during July and
November and December for all continents. ........................................................................... 23
Figure 7: Spatial distribution of fires in Northern and Central America from (a) PROBA-V GL and
(b) MODIS products. The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V),
January-November 2015 for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South America during July
and November 2015 (MODIS) ................................................................................................. 27
Figure 8: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Central
America (left) and North America (right). The time period of interest is January-December
2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South
America during July and November and for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS) .............. 28
Figure 9: Spatial distribution of fires in South America from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS
products. The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), JanuaryNovember 2015 for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South America during July and
November and for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS) ...................................................... 30
Figure 10: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for South
America. See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor. ...................................... 31
Figure 11: Spatial distribution of fires in Africa from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for
MODIS. Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)............................................ 33
Figure 12: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Africa and
the Arabian Peninsula. See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor ................. 34
Figure 13: Spatial distribution of fires in Europe from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products.
The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015
for MODIS. Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS) ...................................... 35
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Figure 14: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Europe. See
Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor .............................................................. 36
Figure 15: Spatial distribution of fires in Asia from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for
MODIS. Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)............................................ 39
Figure 16: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Asia. See
Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor .............................................................. 40
Figure 17: Spatial distribution of fires in Oceania from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products.
The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015
for MODIS. Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS) ...................................... 42
Figure 18: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Oceania.
See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor ....................................................... 43
Figure 19: Summary monthly burned area estimates detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL
(lower). See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor .......................................... 44
Figure 20: Comparison of burned areas detected by MODIS MCD45A1 (all confidence levels) and
PROBA-V products. See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor ...................... 46
Figure 21: Comparison between PROBA V-1Km and MODIS MCD45A1 products for all biomes.
PROBA (January-December) and MODIS (January-November and missing data for July and
November in Central and South America) ............................................................................... 49
Figure 22: Comparison between PROBA-V (January-December) and MODIS MCD45A1 (JanuaryNovember) products for grouped biomes during 2015 ............................................................ 51
Figure 23: Fire event in Hungary reported by EMS and detected pixels reported by PROBA 1Km 52
Figure 24. Fire event in Quesada-Spain reported by EMS and detected pixels reported by PROBA
1km .......................................................................................................................................... 53
Figure 25: Fire event in Montan-Spain reported by EMS on 7th July 2015 and detected pixels
reported by PROBA-V product. MODIS product did not register this event ........................... 54
Figure 26: Fire event in Acebo-Spain reported by EMS on 6th August 2015 and detected pixels
reported by PROBA-V product ................................................................................................ 55
Figure 27: Burned areas comparison between EFFIS, PROBA-V 1Km and MODIS MCD45A1
products for countries with high fire activities during January – December 2015 (km2) .......... 57
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List of Tables
Table 1: GCOS requirements for Burned Area as Essential Climate Variable (GCOS-154, 2011) 15
Table 2. Extract from the Season Status Text file (upper) and season event file (lower) for the time
period 10 January 2016 (after the full year of 2015 had been processed). These
latitude/longitude values correspond to areas in Africa ........................................................... 24
Table 3: Continental comparison of burned areas detected by MODIS MCD45A1 (JanuaryNovember 2015) and PROBA-V product (January to December 2015). Burned area expressed
in km2 ....................................................................................................................................... 47
Table 4. Relative contribution of burned areas of each continent to the total burned area detected
by MODIS MCD45A1 AND PROBA-V ..................................................................................... 48
Table 5. Comparison of MODIS MCD45A1 and PROBA-V burned areas at biome level ............... 50
Table 6. List of fire events maps from the EMS used for comparison with PROBA-V GL and
MODIS products ...................................................................................................................... 52
Table 7. Burned areas comparison between EFFIS, PROBA-V 1Km and MODIS products for
countries with high fire activities during January – December 2015 (km2). * means that Syria is
new to the analysis in 2015. .................................................................................................... 56
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List of Acronyms
ATBD
Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document
CEOS
Committee on Earth Observation Satellites
BA
Burned Area
EC
European Commission
EFFIS
European Forest Fire Information System
EMS
Emergency Management Service
FAO
Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations
FPAR
Fraction of PAR absorbed by the vegetation
GIO
GMES (Copernicus) Initial Operations
GL
Copernicus Global Land service
GSFC
Goddard Space Flight Centre
IPCC
International Panel on Climate Change
JRC
Joint Research Centre
LAI
Leaf Area Index
LPV
Land Product Validation
MODIS
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer
MODIS MCD45A1
MODIS global monthly burned area product Level 3 gridded 500 m
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
PAR
Photosynthetic Active Radiation
TOC
Top-of-Canopy
UMESC
USGS
Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Centre (United States Geological
Survey)
United States Geological Survey
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1 BACKGROUND
1.1
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Global Land (GL) Component in the framework of Copernicus Initial Operations (GIO) is
earmarked as a component of the Land service to operate “a multi-purpose service component”
that will provide a series of bio-geophysical products on the status and evolution of land surface at
global scale. Production and delivery of the parameters are to take place in a timely manner and
are complemented by the constitution of long term time series.
Quality Assessment constitutes the only means of guaranteeing the compliance of generated
products with user requirements. It concerns new products which must pass a scientific evaluation
before to be implemented operationally. The procedure follows, as much as possible, the
guidelines, protocols and metrics defined by the Land Product Validation (LPV) group of the
Committee on Earth Observation Satellite (CEOS) for the validation of satellite-derived land
products. They are described in the Service Validation Plan [GIOGL1_SVP].
Many of the products of the Global Land service are derived from SPOT/VEGETATION sensor
data which was switched off in June 2014. To ensure the continuity of the service at 1km, the
methodologies and the processing lines are being adapted to the data of the PROBA-V sensor.
The quality of the new PROBA-V derived products must be assessed.
The results shown in this document demonstrates in the strongest sense that there continues to be
consistency from SPOT-VGT to PROBA-V-derived burned area product and into the second year
of PROBA-V production. We continue to have reasonable overlap with MODIS burned area
detections. It is important to note that there is no data for MODIS in December 2015. In many
cases, there is spatial coherence and correlations between the products. The results shown below
suggests that PROBA-V derived burned areas for 2015 continue to be aligned to MODIS burned
area data (which was the case for 2014) which has been shown to have better validation outcomes
from an analysis conducted on data for the year 2008. It is recommended that the production of the
Burned Area product in “pre-operation mode” be continued by the Copernicus Global Land service.
This is to allow continuity of product use by the various users of the product.
1.2
SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES
The document presents the results of the quality assessment of PROBA-V Burned Area product
against MODIS burned area product. It is performed on products derived from PROBA-V TOC S1
1km resolution input data. Processing of the PROBA-V input data to derive burned area
commenced on the 20 October 2013 (the first dekad output) to 31 Dec 2015 at a global scale and
production is on-going.
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This report describes a quality assessment of the year 2015 of product output from 1 January 2015
to 31 December 2015, whilst noting that December 2015 data is not available for MODIS. The
objective of this report is to present evidence in support of making a decision to move the burned
area products to an “operational” mode and one that users can engage and utilise.
1.3
CONTENT OF THE DOCUMENT
This document is structured as follows:





1.4
Chapter 2 recalls the users requirements, and the expected performance
Chapter 3 describes the methodology for quality assessment
Chapter 4 presents the results of the scientific analysis
Chapter 5 summarizes the main conclusions of the study
Chapter 6 makes recommendations based upon the results
RELATED DOCUMENTS
1.4.1
Applicable documents
AD1: Annex II – Tender Specifications to Contract Notice 2012/S 129-213277 of 7th July 2012
AD2: Appendix 1 – Product and Service Detailed Technical requirements to Annex II to Contract
Notice 2012/S 129-213277 of 7th July 2012
1.4.2
Input
Document ID
Descriptor
GIOGL1_SSD
Service Specifications Document of the Global
Component of the Copernicus Land Service.
GIOGL1_SVP
Service Validation Plan of the Global Land Service
GIOGL1_ATBD_BA1km-V1_I2.10
Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document
PROBA-V 1km Burned Area, Issue I2.10.
GIOGL1_VR_BAV1
Validation Report of
product, Issue I2.01
1.4.3
SPOT/VGT
of
Burned
the
Area
Output
Document ID
Descriptor
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GIOGL1_PUM_BA1km-V1
1.4.4
Product User Manual of PROBA-V 1km Burned Area
product, Issue I2.11
External documents
None
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2 REVIEW OF USERS REQUIREMENTS
According to the applicable document [AD2], the user’s requirements relevant for burned area are
as follows.

Definition: surfaces where vegetation is damaged or destroyed by fires

Geometric properties:
o
o

location accuracy shall be 1/3rd of the at-nadir instantaneous field of view
pixel co-coordinates shall be given for centre of pixel
Geographical coverage:
o
o
o
o

Geographic projection: regular lat-long
Geodetical datum: WGS84
Coordinate position: centre of pixel
Window coordinates:
 Upper Left:180°W-74°N
 Bottom Right: 180°E 56°S
Ancillary information:
o
o

the per-pixel date of the individual measurements or the start-end dates of the
period actually covered
quality indicators, with explicit per-pixel identification of the cause of anomalous
parameter result
Accuracy requirements: wherever applicable the bio-geophysical parameters should meet
the internationally agreed accuracy standards laid down in document “Systematic
Observation Requirements for Satellite-Based Products for Climate”. Supplemental details
to the satellite based component of the “Implementation Plan for the Global Observing
System for Climate in Support of the UNFCCC”. GCOS-#154, 2011” (Table 1).
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Table 1: GCOS requirements for Burned Area as Essential Climate Variable (GCOS-154, 2011)
Variable
Burned
area
Horizontal
resolution
Temporal
resolution
Accuracy
Stability
250m
Daily
detection
15% (error of omission
and commission),
compared to 30m
observations
15% (error of omission
and commission),
compared to 30m
observations
Other user requirements for burned area products come from FP7 project geoland2. The
requirements were for 10-day spatial products delineating the area burned over a period of several
years. These maps should be robustly validated where possible, given the constraints of high
resolution image availability. A seasonality metric, requested by users, has been specified and
provided. Frequency of observations of the land surface (cloud-free etc.) has also been included in
the product.
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3 QUALITY ASSESSMENT METHOD
3.1
PROCEDURE
The quality of the products derived from the new sensors in the context of evolution of the service
is assessed. The generic guidelines of the CEOS LPV protocol for global burned area validation
have been separated out into three sections. The first section identifies how validation data should
be collated and processed to ensure an unbiased and representative data set. The second section
identifies the measures of accuracy and the third section reports on format standardization and
metadata. The first section has been published for a review period and there is generally accepted
within the scientific community. The second section has advanced in the past year within projects
sponsored by NASA and ESA (CCI programme). This is alongside the production of a set of
reference validation products that meet the first section of the CEOS guidelines.
The Global Land burned area product derived from VGT has been validated according to CEOS
guidelines [GIOGL1_VR_BA_I2.01]. However, a full set of validation data, as described in
GIOGL1_VR_BA_I2.01, is not available for 2014 which is the overlapping period of VGT and
PROBA-V-derived burned area products. Quality Assessment, that is not a strict independent
validation, can be furnished through the evaluation of the products against existing and validated
burned area products at different spatial scales. The following plan is envisaged within the scope of
the GL service.






Checks on the output layers against those described in the Product User Manual.
Confirmation of the performance of the seasonal switch-on and switch-off routines on the
period of time considered in the reporting period. This is implemented to reduce
commission error. Note that these date thresholds have been revised in the evolution of the
algorithm implemented on PROBA-V [GIOGL1_ATBD_Burned-Area_I2.10].
Confirmation of the repeat fire season reset that is activated on the 1st April of every year
for all of those grid cells not currently being flagged as in an active burn season. Note that
this will be addressed in a further specific quality assessment report.
Spatial and temporal comparisons against MODIS burned area product.
Spatial and temporal comparisons against the European EFFIS and Copernicus
Emergency Service data.
Quality control of the text output files as data are processed in near-real time and the fire
event and seasonality record is compiled.
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3.2
SATELLITE REFERENCE PRODUCTS
We compare PROBA-V GL burned area products for an overlapping period with MODIS, EFFIS
and Copernicus Emergency Service burned area products.
3.2.1
MODIS-MCD45A1 burned area product
Quality monitoring was performed based on data from MODIS-MCD45A1 Burned Area Product
which is a global monthly Level 3 gridded 500 m product containing per-pixel burning and quality
information . Three different version of MODIS burned area product are available:
1. The official MCD45A1 in HDF-EOS format, which is available as part of the MODIS suite
of global land products
2. The re-projected monthly Geotiff version available from the University of Maryland
3. The re-projected monthly Shapefile version available from the University of Maryland
We have used the monthly Geotiff version of the product which is derived from the standard
MCD45A1 hdf version by University of Maryland and downloaded from http://modisfire.umd.edu/pages/BurnedArea.php. Geotiffs are re-projected in Plate-Carrée projection and cover
a set of sub-continental windows represented in the Figure 1. Please note that MODIS data from
December 2015 were not available (data from January and February 2016 were available).
For each month of the year, two layers are available in Geotiff format:
1. Burn date (2 bytes): Each pixel contains a Julian day of burning within the month, or a
code indicating unburned areas, snow, water, or lack of data.
2. BA pixel QA (1 byte): Confidence of detection 1 (most confident) to 5 (least confident).
Confidence level 5 indicates burned areas detected in agriculture zone, which should be
treated as low confidence because of the inherent issues in mapping agricultural burned
areas reliably. For this QA exercise, we included all confidence level detections from
MODIS to take into account the agricultural burning which is part of global vegetation fire
activity. We do not stratify by MODIS confidence level for a number of reasons: Firstly,
the analysis of the results per confidence layer of MODIS would generate more figures
and tables that would confuse users. We already stratify for biome, continent, and
country (at European level) reporting. Second, the MODIS web page provides no
guidance on use of the confidence level against the detections thinking it may be
agriculture fire related. We cannot make assumptions on behalf of the user regarding the
application of confidence levels of the MODIS burned area product – we cannot override
their disclaimer. Thirdly, the MODIS product has not been validated by the developers
and certainty not validated per confidence level.
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Figure 1: Windows subsets Geotiff-MODIS MCD45A1 burned area product
This product was used as a reference for the systematic 12-months (January-December) Quality
Monitoring since it is an operative product reporting daily basis burned areas at global level
available for the whole MODIS record (2000 to present) {Boschetti, 2013}. During July and
November 2015, the MODIS MCD45A1 product shows missing data for wide areas of Central and
South America which will affect the comparison with PROBA-V for those specific months (Figure
2).
Figure 2: Missed data (Central and South America) of MODIS MCD45A1 during July and November
2015. December 2015 is missing for all continents
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3.3
CONTINENTAL COMPARISONS
Burned areas detected by PROBA-V and by the MODIS MCD45A1 products were compared in
continental basis for the period 1 Jan 2015 to 31st December 2015 (with MODIS MCD45A1).
Both dataset have a common Plate-Carrée projection but the pixels size differs between them. The
pixels size of PROBA-V is 1 Km and 0.4394 for MODIS MCD45A1. Transformation of pixel size to
standard area in square kilometres was performed by multiplying the pixels number to the
corresponding pixel size.
The GL product used is presented at continental level. There are two overlapping regions between
North America - South America and Europe – Africa (Figure 3). On the other hand, MODIS
MCD45A1 product is presented in a set of 24 sub-continental windows which also include
overlapping regions (see Figure 1).
A global mosaic was applied to each dataset and later it was clipped using seven continental
windows defined for this purpose (Figure 4). The results avoid the overlapping regions on both
datasets.
Figure 3: GL overlapping region between continents (blue-yellow areas)
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Figure 4: Continental windows defined for comparison between GL products and MODIS MCD45A1
3.4
IN-SITU REFERENCE PRODUCTS
Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS) data of fires and burned areas was used as a
reference of in-situ data at high spatial resolution. Validation of the EMS maps is based on the
methodology protocol developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC).
The search of burned areas reported by the EMS maps resulted in 4 fire events occurred in
Hungary (one event) and Spain (3 events) during January to December 2015
http://emergency.copernicus.eu/mapping/copernicus-emergency-managementservice#zoom=2&lat=46.3028&lon=2.866&layers=T00000B0
Another dataset used to assess the GL products was the European Forest Fire Information System
(EFFIS) established by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Directorate General for
Environment (DG ENV) of the European Commission (EC) (http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/effis/).
The dataset of European forest fires is compiled by European countries and is checked, stored and
managed within EFFIS.
3.5
REGIONAL/BIOME ASSESSMENT
Biome Assessment was based on the Global Ecofloristic Zones mapped by the United Nations
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). This classification is been used by the International
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to categorize carbon stock estimates (Figure 5). Each of the 20
biomes is characterized by their temperature regime (tropical, subtropical, temperate, boreal, and
polar) and their vegetation type (humid forest, dry forest, moist deciduous forest, shrubland,
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steppe,
desert,
etc.)
(FAO
2000).
The
map
can
http://databasin.org/datasets/dc4f6efd1fa84ea99df61ae9c5b3b763
be
downloaded
here:
Figure 5: Global Ecofloristic Zones mapped by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO)
GL products and MODIS MCD45A1 monthly global mosaics datasets were clipped using the
Global Ecofloristic Zones map and a raster file was generated for every biome and month. An
ESRI Arc-Toolbox tool developed by USGS-UMESC (United States Geological Survey-Upper
Midwest Environmental Sciences Centre) called UMESC Applications tool was applied during the
clipping process (http://www.umesc.usgs.gov/management/dss/raster_split_tool.html).
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4 RESULTS
4.1
VERIFICATION OF PRODUCTS
An evaluation of the output products derived the following:
1. Data production from PROBA-V started on the 16 October 2013 and the first dekad of
production was 20 October 2013. This is the first data product. It consists of a contaminated
pixel composite file over the 10-day dekad period, a burned area product over the 10-day
dekad period, the first date of burn within the dekad and the seasonal first date of detection.
2. After 4 10-day periods of processing, the season text files are produced. This is in keeping
with the algorithm [GIOGL1_ATBD_Burned-Area_I2.10]. Two text files are noted, Event
and Status files as described in the Product User Manual [GIOGL1_PUM_BA1km-V1].
Table 2 describes one of these output tables.
3. Burned areas are detected by making spectral comparisons with daily-averaged
reflectances from cloud, and other pre-processing criteria, -free observations of the Earth’s
surface. It is therefore sensible to allow the composition of these cloud free reflectance
mosaics to build up over a period of a few months before detections are switched on. In this
Quality Assessment analysis, we considered detections from 1 January 2015 to 31
December 2015.
4. The season reset of burn areas takes place on the 1st of April of each year. This is in
addition to the reset of a burned area in the event of a fire season being detected.
The number of pixels detected in PROBA-V BA products in the year 2015 is shown in Figure 6,
noting that there is the equivalent of four MODIS pixels for each SPOT-VGT pixel as a result of the
difference in pixel spacing. Both products show a characteristic decrease in burned areas as
Spring arrives to the Northern Hemisphere (Julian Day 1-90). Around the beginning of April, we
see increases in the number of detections associated with fire in mid-latitude bands in the Northern
Hemisphere, particularly in Russia and Mongolia. We can see the increase in burned area start
that is indicative on Southern Hemisphere Africa at the end of July (Julian day 212) followed by a
decrease in burned areas until beginning of October (Julian day 274).
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Figure 6: Number of burned area detections from the MODIS (top) and PROBA-V (lower) products,
over the globe. MODIS has missing data for Central and South America during July and November
and December for all continents.
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Table 2 shows the extract from the season event database text file. It illustrates that fire seasons
are being detected by the burned area algorithm derived from the PROBA-V sensor. As an
example for one particular line (21.000 12.000) in the upper table, it states that the season status
(status) is active as indicated by a flag value of 1, the start of season (sos) started in dekad count
1294, the peak of the fire season (smax) so far has taken place in dekad 1295, the end of season
(eos) has taken place in 1296, the maximum number of pixel counts in the peak dekad is 137
(smax_no), there has been just 1 fire season recorded to date (scounts), since the last reset, and
at the moment the season reset flag is 0 (s_reset). In the lower table, for a particular grid cell,
again in Africa, it shows that there have been multiple fire season events recorded since
processing started in the year 2000. They occurred in dekads 738, 739, 742 corresponding to start,
peak and end of season respectively and then a further triple number. With 15 years of data
processing, there have been 15 distinct fire seasons recorded, sometimes of different length
(examples of between 2 and 5 dekads over the 15 years).
Table 2. Extract from the Season Status Text file (upper) and season event file (lower) for the time
period 10 January 2016 (after the full year of 2015 had been processed). These latitude/longitude
values correspond to areas in Africa
Longitude
Latitude
status sos
smax
eos
smax_no
scount s reset
0.00000000
1.00000000
2.00000000
3.00000000
4.00000000
5.00000000
6.00000000
7.00000000
8.00000000
9.00000000
10.00000000
11.00000000
12.00000000
13.00000000
14.00000000
15.00000000
16.00000000
17.00000000
18.00000000
19.00000000
20.00000000
21.00000000
22.00000000
23.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
12.00000000
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1293
1293
1258
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1222
1221
1294
0
0
1293
1293
1258
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1222
1221
1295
0
0
1296
1297
1261
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1223
1223
1296
0
0
349
630
678
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
200
222
137
0
0
3
3
2
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
1
1
Longitude
Latitude
sos
pos
eos, sos
pos
eos, …
19.00000000
846,
1026,
1170,
-6.00000000
850;
919,
1030; 1062,
1174; 1205,
738,
919,
1062,
1205,
739,
923;
1066;
1209;
742;
954,
1098,
1242,
773,
958;
1102;
1246;
778;
991,
1134,
1279,
PROBA Data
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954,
1098,
1242,
809,
991,
1136,
1279,
810,
994;
1138;
1282;
814;
1026,
1170,
845,
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4.2
COMPARISON OF GLOBAL BURNED AREA PRODUCTS AT CONTINENTAL LEVEL
The spatial distribution of burned area per continental window from PROBA-V GL products for the
period 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2015 is shown in Figure 7 for Northern and Central
America, Figure 9 for South America, Figure 11 for Africa, Figure 13 for Europe, Figure 15 for Asia
and Figure 17 for Oceania. Also shown are the corresponding maps for MODIS product for the
period January 2015 to November 2015. For display purposes, the maps of North and Central
America are joined. An interpretation follows each set of map data.
4.2.1
North and Central America
In Central and North America (Figure 7), we see late Spring/early Summer Northern Hemisphere
fire activity. This is particularly associated with crop stubble and agricultural burning in central USA
and along the border between the USA and Canada. There seems to be less isolated pixels in the
MODIS product, however isolated and widely distributed burn activity cannot be ruled out as fields
are cleared before the growing season. We see similar patterns at these latitudes in Asia (Figure
15). Further south, the fire season in Mexico occurs during the first few months of the calendar
year.
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Figure 7: Spatial distribution of fires in Northern and Central America from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b)
MODIS products. The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), JanuaryNovember 2015 for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South America during July and November
2015 (MODIS)
Figure 8 shows comparative analysis of these regions. The overlapping region (Figure 3) is shown
separately to North America. The PROBA-V GL and MODIS results indicate a reduction in the
burned area in Central America after June and a recover starting in November. It is interesting to
note that detections from PROBA-V GL exceed those from MODIS in the dry, winter period. This is
consistent with the end of the dry season and commencement of the wet season at these latitudes.
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Figure 8: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Central America
(left) and North America (right). The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V),
January-November 2015 for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South America during July and
November and for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)
4.2.2
South America
In South America (Figure 9), burned areas are detected by the PROBA-V GL and MODIS products
in the tropical savannas of Colombia and Venezuela. These fires occur on an annual basis in the
first few months of each calendar year. We also see fires reported by PROBA-V GL along Bolivia
and Argentina that are taking place in the Southern Hemisphere summer. A concentration of fire
activity is seen towards the centre of the country, although it is more pronounced for the MODIS
product than PROBA-V GL. The PROBA-V GL product detects more burned areas along the spine
of the Andes Mountain range. Previous work undertaken in the GBA2000 and L3JRC products
could not rule these regions out as candidates for fire activity (Tansey et al., 2004). As the MODIS
algorithm relies on extended periods of cloud free observations to invert the Bidirectional
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Reflectance Distribution Function to correct for look angle it may be that performance is
compromised in these tropical mountain ranges where burning takes place on a wide range of
slopes and at a considerable range of altitude (Tansey et al. 2004). Burned areas are detected in
Brazil during the second semester of 2015, mainly in the dryer central and eastern parts of the
country. In Brazil there are complex short fire season that are related to latitude and land use
activities.
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Figure 9: Spatial distribution of fires in South America from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS
products. The time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015
for MODIS. Missing data for Central and South America during July and November and for the whole
of December 2015 (MODIS)
Figure 10 shows the temporal comparison between the two burned area products. Detections are
much more averaged out over the year according to PROBA-V whereas for MODIS there are
distinct periods of high and low burning activity. The PROBA-V GL detections showed two peaks,
one from January to April corresponding to the northern hemisphere dry season and the other from
July to November corresponding to the southern hemisphere dry season. MODIS seem to be
characterised by episodic events of very high burned area detections over short periods.
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Figure 10: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for South America.
See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor.
4.2.3
Africa and the Arabian Peninsula
In Africa, burned areas are reasonably well correlated between the two products in space and time
at the continental scale (Figure 11). The fire season is well defined and the shift in the dry season
from Northern and Southern Hemisphere is clearly seen. Fires in Southern Africa are detected as
the dry season arrives between April to September. Detection performance in West Africa does not
seem to be as good for the PROBA-V product against the MODIS product. The MODIS product
was optimised for detection in tropical savannah ecosystems and this may help explain why there
are more detections in this region (see http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/atbd/atbd_mod14.pdf). It
may be the case that as a result of the finer spatial resolution. Data shown in Annex 1d also
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confirm that MODIS detects greater amounts of burned area in biomes associated with Tropical
Dry Forests, Tropical rainforest and Tropical deciduous forest. Fire in these biomes dominates the
African landscape.
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Figure 11: Spatial distribution of fires in Africa from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for MODIS.
Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)
Figure 12 shows the temporal comparison between the two different burned area products.
Detection rate is considerably higher for the MODIS product across all parts of Africa.
Reassuringly, the temporal profile is consistent between the PROBA-V and MODIS products with a
dip in fire activity occurring around April. Whilst many areas in Africa will enter a fire season, other
areas will not consistently achieve the threshold of what defines a region being in a fire season. It
is clearly a challenge to improve detection rates in Africa with PROBA-V and it is hoped that the
higher resolution PROBA-V 333m product yield improved results.
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Figure 12: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Africa and the
Arabian Peninsula. See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
4.2.4
Europe
In Europe (Figure 13), the PROBA-V product successfully detects agricultural crop residue burning
in Eastern Europe during April to September that is well documented and takes place on an annual
basis (Tansey et al. 2004). The fires take place in Ukraine shortly after the winter ends. As was the
case in 2014, the MODIS product fails to detect these burned areas, instead showing detections
further to the north into Russia. During the period July-Sept 2015, fires are detected by the MODIS
product in the Iberian Peninsula, with significant amounts in Portugal. The PROBA-V product
makes a number of detections but not to the same extent as MODIS.
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Figure 13: Spatial distribution of fires in Europe from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for MODIS.
Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)
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Figure 14 shows that the modified latitudinal masking of false detections in the northern
hemisphere winter by the PROBA-V satellite has been completely effective and better mirrors the
MODIS product. The PROBA-V and MODIS products make little to no detections in the period
between January and March and between June and July. PROBA-V detections start in early April
with the agricultural fire activity in Eastern Europe. There is an intense period of burned area
detection in the back end of the summer months of 2015 which is picked up to some extent by the
PROBA-V product but rather more by the MODIS product.
Figure 14: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Europe. See
Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
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4.2.5
Asia
In Asia (Figure 15), forest fires in Kazakhstan and central Russia, Mongolia and Northern China
are well characterised by both the PROBA-V and MODIS products. The PROBA-V products make
detections, as was the case in 2014, in southern China associated with the winter dry season
which is not seen by the MODIS sensor in any great detail. Conversely, the MODIS sensor makes
large area detection of fires in central India between April to June that indicated very large patches
of fire scars. PROBA-V does detect fires in this region, but not to the same extent. The MODIS
product being characterised by larger coherence burn scars and the PROBA-V product being more
spatially distributed is a pattern that we have seen before in South America. In Annex 1a and 1c,
the findings suggest that MODIS detects larger burned area in spring months in Boreal coniferous
and boreal tundra woodland biomes meanwhile PROBA-V detects larger burned areas in Boreal
mountain system biome. The PROBA-V makes strong detections in the Polar Biome. There is
evidence that fires take place in Tundra ecosystems at these latitudes. The scale of this burning is
not particularly in keeping with the state of these forests, many of which will be coming out of a
frozen state and weather conditions not favourable for fire activity. The PROBA-V product shows a
linear feature in northern China that is associated with the latitudinal masking for areas to the north
of this region during months of the northern hemisphere winter. It is also visible that very few fires
are detected during the early summer months in Russia by the MODIS algorithm. It will certainly be
the case that Russian forests will have suffered fire by June in any calendar year (Tansey et al.
2004).
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Figure 15: Spatial distribution of fires in Asia from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for MODIS.
Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)
Figure 16 shows the temporal burned area detection rates for the two products. The modified
latitudinal masking is seen to be very effective for PROBA-V to reduce commission as described in
the results for Europe in the previous section. Total values of burned areas detected with MODIS
are still higher than for PROBA-V GL.
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Figure 16: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Asia. See Figure
8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
4.2.6
Oceania
The pattern of fire activity in Australia (Figure 17) indicates differences between PROBA-V and
MODIS report big patches of fire in the northern part of Australia especially during the second half
of 2015. MODIS records a larger overall fire-affected area. Fires are detected towards the end of
June 2015 as the dry season starts to take hold in Northern Australia (Tansey et al. 2004) and are
picked up by the MODIS and PROBA-V products. Similar climatic conditions are found here as
occur in southern hemisphere Africa. Fire scars are large and relatively easily detected. There is a
considerable amount of relatively isolated detections made throughout semi-arid regions of the
continent by the PROBA-V product. There is evidence that fires occur, as they are detected by
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both products, in Southern Australia during the summer period (January-February 2015) and also
there is considerable crop burning activity in South-West Australia which appears to be detected
(Smith et al. 2007). A seasonal mask can be seen in the PROBA-V product at around 30 degrees
South which is caused by a temporal mask being implemented during the southern hemisphere
winter.
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Figure 17: Spatial distribution of fires in Oceania from (a) PROBA-V GL and (b) MODIS products. The
time period of interest is January-December 2015 (PROBA-V), January-November 2015 for MODIS.
Missing data for the whole of December 2015 (MODIS)
Figure 18 shows the temporal detection rates of the two products. There is some consistency in
detection rates between PROBA-V and MODIS products especially in May-September 2015, after
that MODIS report a sharp increase of burned areas. The burned area detected by MODIS
remains higher than that detected by PROBA-V GL.
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Figure 18: Daily burned areas detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL (lower) for Oceania. See
Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
4.2.7
Summary
Summary plots for each continent are shown in Figure 19. Focusing on PROBA-V and MODIS
products, Africa dominates fire activity in most of the months of a calendar year. This is then
followed by Asia as a result of grassland and agricultural burning in the northern hemisphere
spring. Asia, Oceania and South America reported larger burned areas in April and May. Africa
starts to play a further role in global fire activity in June when the southern hemisphere fire season
commences. There are significant differences in sum burned area over Africa between PROBA-V
and MODIS products, but looking at the maps, differences could be of regional scale. This will be a
focus of the investigation into the use of PROBA-V 333m products for burned area mapping which
will be better than the 500m spatial resolution that MODIS make detections.
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Figure 19: Summary monthly burned area estimates detected by MODIS (top) and PROBA-V GL
(lower). See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
Further comparison at continental level between MODIS MCD45A1 (all confident levels) and
PROBA-V products is performed over 2015 (Figure 20 and Table 3). The results illustrate that, in
Europe, during the first two months of 2015 MODIS product detected a limited area affected by fire
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and PROBA-V did not detect fire events during the first three months but detected the higher fire
events during April and September 2015, consistent with large areas of agricultural burning in
Eastern Europe. In Africa and Asia, MODIS reports higher values across the period of study. At
global level, MODIS and PROBA-V products reported similar total values. As the validation report
[GIOGL1_VR_BAV1] showed that MODIS was yielding better verified results, it is very promising
that PROBA-V products better track MODIS burned area estimates than SPOT/VGT was able to.
At a continental scale, the strongest contribution during the period of analysis comes from Africa &
Arabian Peninsula for both products (Table 4). In January 2015, this region reported the highest
relative contribution to the global burnt areas for the two products. PROBA-V product reported
contributions of 71.05% and MODIS MCD45A1 reported a contribution up to 90.36%.
Reflecting on the comparisons between the two products, it is worth noting that what the
implications are for significant periods of time where there is missing data, such as that what we
observe with the MODIS products (July and November for Central and South America and
December for all continents). There is no notification on the MODIS Burned Area web pages and
the missing data cover important fire prone regions at times when burning is expected. It is
therefore important that significant gaps are indicated and mitigated against when users perform
time series analysis on the products. It is certainly the case over Australia that MODIS
underestimates the true extent of burning during the 2015 period.
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Figure 20: Comparison of burned areas detected by MODIS MCD45A1 (all confidence levels) and
PROBA-V products. See Figure 8 caption for reference dates for each sensor
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Table 3: Continental comparison of burned areas detected by MODIS MCD45A1 (January-November 2015) and PROBA-V product (January to
December 2015). Burned area expressed in km2
MODIS MCD45A1
MONTH
Jan/2015
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
TOTAL
AFRICA
535,168
192,907
83,416
37,277
80,023
345,213
582,891
556,382
388,193
158,744
391,429
3,351,644
ASIA
C. AMERICA
34,189
916
34,838
2,039
101,200
2,043
177,711
1,306
131,486
2,332
91,673
4
113,015
217,978
28
124,434
5
74,481
28
45,228
1,146,232
8,701
MONTH
Jan/2015
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
TOTAL
AFRICA
182,766
81,750
30,051
21,244
23,030
79,447
158,662
151,362
84,129
45,334
86,512
177,791
1,122,080
ASIA
C. AMERICA
13,444
8,828
12,964
6,568
14,448
3,676
171,010
1,959
62,325
957
90,462
194
61,364
203
131,362
147
86,666
131
11,553
376
17,755
2,105
16,354
4,751
689,708
29,895
EUROPE N. AMERICA S. AMERICA
15
2,690
13,548
69
10,254
4,119
2,494
4,780
3,690
1,745
7,065
11,132
910
10,426
3,960
4,334
30,653
6,242
21,527
49,096
42,261
20,176
52,812
10,905
29,809
109,984
1,676
8,832
51,292
2,470
4,588
88,405
178,368
256,779
OCEANIA
5,768
8,148
14,500
51,778
82,234
35,931
29,905
52,426
65,742
125,346
187,345
659,123
TOTAL
592,293
252,373
212,122
288,015
311,371
514,050
796,434
942,064
729,072
420,398
631,060
5,689,252
OCEANIA
15,094
15,410
17,536
24,635
32,567
32,674
26,241
20,331
16,872
27,532
34,146
16,912
279,949
TOTAL
257,231
142,314
88,809
318,569
151,605
254,303
304,008
378,632
262,057
126,118
165,973
250,760
2,700,379
PROBA V 1K
EUROPE N. AMERICA S. AMERICA
16,843
20,257
11,849
13,773
5,972
17,126
28,647
65,997
5,077
6,154
18,811
7,761
1,203
36,731
13,591
2,495
35,310
19,733
9,477
44,353
21,600
13,497
34,435
26,326
3,569
37,754
10,159
15,296
20,793
14,159
61,473
304,821
212,453
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Table 4. Relative contribution of burned areas of each continent to the total burned area detected by MODIS MCD45A1 AND PROBA-V
MODIS MCD45A1
MONTH
Jan/2015
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
AFRICA
90.36%
76.44%
39.32%
12.94%
25.70%
67.16%
73.19%
59.06%
53.24%
37.76%
62.03%
ASIA
C. AMERICA
5.77%
0.15%
13.80%
0.81%
47.71%
0.96%
61.70%
0.45%
42.23%
0.75%
17.83%
0.00%
14.19%
0.00%
23.14%
0.00%
17.07%
0.00%
17.72%
0.01%
7.17%
0.00%
MONTH
Jan/2015
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
AFRICA
71.05%
57.44%
33.84%
6.67%
15.19%
31.24%
52.19%
39.98%
32.10%
35.95%
52.12%
70.90%
ASIA
C. AMERICA
5.23%
3.43%
9.11%
4.62%
16.27%
4.14%
53.68%
0.61%
41.11%
0.63%
35.57%
0.08%
20.19%
0.07%
34.69%
0.04%
33.07%
0.05%
9.16%
0.30%
10.70%
1.27%
6.52%
1.89%
EUROPE N. AMERICA S. AMERICA
0.00%
0.45%
2.29%
0.03%
4.06%
1.63%
1.18%
2.25%
1.74%
0.61%
2.45%
3.87%
0.29%
3.35%
1.27%
0.84%
5.96%
1.21%
2.70%
6.16%
0.00%
4.49%
2.14%
5.61%
1.50%
4.09%
15.09%
0.40%
2.10%
12.20%
0.39%
0.73%
0.00%
OCEANIA
0.97%
3.23%
6.84%
17.98%
26.41%
6.99%
3.75%
5.57%
9.02%
29.82%
29.69%
TOTAL
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
OCEANIA
5.87%
10.83%
19.75%
7.73%
21.48%
12.85%
8.63%
5.37%
6.44%
21.83%
20.57%
6.74%
TOTAL
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
100%
PROBA V 1K
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EUROPE N. AMERICA S. AMERICA
0.00%
6.55%
7.88%
0.00%
8.33%
9.68%
0.00%
6.72%
19.28%
8.99%
20.72%
1.59%
4.06%
12.41%
5.12%
0.47%
14.44%
5.34%
0.82%
11.61%
6.49%
2.50%
11.71%
5.70%
5.15%
13.14%
10.05%
0.00%
2.83%
29.94%
0.00%
6.12%
9.22%
0.00%
8.29%
5.65%
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4.3
COMPARISON OF GLOBAL BURNED AREA PRODUCTS AT BIOME LEVEL
The burned monthly areas per biome detected from the two products during 2015 is shown in
Figure 21 and summarised in Table 5. The results are further elaborated in Annex 1 for major
biome groups. All confidence levels (1 to 5) of MODIS MCD45A1 (see Section 3.2.2) were used.
Large differences between products can be identified in most of the tropical biomes, especially the
tropical dry forest and tropical moist deciduous forest where MODIS MCD45A1 reported
considerable higher values of burned areas during this period.
Figure 21: Comparison between PROBA V-1Km and MODIS MCD45A1 products for all biomes.
PROBA (January-December) and MODIS (January-November and missing data for July and
November in Central and South America)
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Table 5. Comparison of MODIS MCD45A1 and PROBA-V burned areas at biome level
Jan
Boreal coniferous forest
Boreal mountain system
Boreal tundra woodland
Polar
Subtropical desert
Subtropical dry forest
Subtropical humid forest
Subtropical mountain system
Subtropical steppe
Temperate mountain system
Temperate continental forest
Temperate steppe
Temperate desert
Temperate oceanic forest
Tropical desert
Tropical dry forest
Tropical moist deciduous forest
Tropical mountain system
Tropical rainforest
Tropical shrubland
TOTAL
5,989
1,455
1,482
743
7,921
547
36
145
258
174
155
192,290
274,711
20,554
61,650
24,069
592,178
Jan
Boreal coniferous forest
Boreal mountain system
Boreal tundra woodland
Polar
Subtropical desert
Subtropical dry forest
Subtropical humid forest
Subtropical mountain system
Subtropical steppe
Temperate mountain system
Temperate continental forest
Temperate steppe
Temperate desert
Temperate oceanic forest
Tropical desert
Tropical dry forest
Tropical moist deciduous forest
Tropical mountain system
Tropical rainforest
Tropical shrubland
TOTAL
19,280
1,462
2,050
9,984
16,867
192
3,140
8,873
126
8,873
52,768
52,768
12,787
16,065
9,522
214,758
Feb
-
Mar
16
11,739
4,093
678
595
3,093
1,230
660
755
3,523
428
36
112,024
66,455
17,221
8,218
21,524
252,287
47
1,531
8,694
1,723
1,829
1,670
1,465
2,014
4,328
48,197
4,124
167
37
53,517
39,607
15,458
7,292
19,904
211,605
Apr
5,746
24,911
3
4
16,166
1,382
5,275
3,063
722
6,868
19,154
95,293
4,628
1,714
290
56,609
9,152
2,432
824
33,278
287,515
May
8,568
13,122
983
12
9,002
3,077
1,060
6,727
5,065
3,762
16,256
40,896
6,491
33
13,508
61,401
42,911
957
21,053
55,139
310,023
Feb
14,923
1,973
1,436
7,835
8,985
203
3,692
5,984
181
5,984
35,249
35,249
12,618
5,072
8,663
148,047
Mar
12,449
1,526
989
7,253
9,580
221
5,154
4,923
381
4,923
15,797
15,797
7,424
1,710
9,447
97,576
Apr
3,527
3,011
1
17,566
1,834
1,272
12,137
7,847
31,534
66,412
102,737
29,237
716
5,401
13,160
3,376
5,676
823
11,157
317,423
May
3,063
3,304
58
12,719
1,295
293
6,516
8,042
9,426
20,502
30,991
7,481
24
3,254
14,569
7,501
5,972
2,283
13,962
151,254
MODIS MCD45A1 - 2015
Jun
Jul
Ago
12,726
29,209
1,103
5,569
19,099
15,411
10,103
15,641
2,782
1,265
577
306
8,347
4,210
16,156
5,375
4,740
1,959
1,229
327
2,500
5,267
6,771
17,220
11,055
8,191
5,469
1,629
3,145
7,851
15,710
17,723
63,878
49,934
64,934
131,389
10,503
17,624
42,849
36
110
849
388
136
47
67,766
121,282
189,618
187,060
326,337
345,584
5,190
10,531
13,550
97,196
127,936
50,305
17,161
16,077
30,732
513,510
794,598
939,560
PROBA-V- 1 Km 2015
Jun
Jul
Ago
23,360
11,109
8,137
18,627
21,317
36,057
15,550
9,198
6,979
3,663
8,554
16,097
21,151
13,902
11,395
719
1,246
990
231
237
261
5,512
6,812
11,886
7,387
6,986
3,762
4,817
8,196
15,180
12,296
4,246
21,602
35,026
16,936
47,014
7,420
12,924
23,114
37
46
240
2,753
3,207
1,633
15,866
28,693
36,161
46,989
102,464
101,254
8,141
10,563
9,231
14,479
23,020
14,346
9,808
13,883
12,548
253,831
303,539
377,887
Sep
3,991
2,409
610
55
12,034
2,877
3,048
12,891
4,972
3,774
53,605
75,114
7,324
57
341
244,146
244,455
13,089
11,343
32,117
728,251
Oct
1,408
4,173
2
53,587
1,158
4,566
4,758
12,023
4,305
32,029
15,755
4,440
52
619
126,015
86,584
7,731
2,353
57,317
418,874
Nov
31,386
4,296
756
1,672
70,373
1,161
6,824
4,863
284
279
11,653
264,473
75,786
2,005
1,749
152,410
629,994
Sep
1,362
1,483
3
5,253
2,460
495
20,036
6,583
32,078
11,580
44,746
20,102
156
3,008
36,392
49,659
6,979
7,475
11,887
261,735
Oct
14,776
2,002
920
11,835
12,663
331
7,229
172
11,346
19,879
20,840
5,929
3,821
14,130
125,876
Nov
20,873
1,513
1,169
14,583
13,546
130
3,245
92
12,086
46,576
17,355
7,740
2,338
24,320
165,566
23
Dec
Dec
20,631
1,585
1,388
15,513
16,792
212
1,285
124
14,308
67,888
80,498
10,646
7,146
12,619
250,636
TOTAL
62,822
86,241
30,125
2,219
177,309
32,132
22,751
61,378
130,350
36,286
230,202
527,275
102,048
3,900
27,209
1,489,142
1,698,643
108,717
389,918
459,727
5,678,395
TOTAL
50,558
83,798
31,788
28,315
184,918
18,604
10,740
129,901
119,039
102,520
136,638
301,196
120,058
2,296
76,776
382,998
533,751
103,708
98,579
151,948
2,668,129
The accumulated burned areas reported for each product during the period of comparison (Figure
22) shows, in boreal biomes, MODIS MCD45A1 reported higher values in Boreal coniferous forest
and Boreal tundra woodland meanwhile PROBA-V reported higher values in Boreal mountain
system and Polar biomes, but not differing by large amounts. In temperate biomes, MODIS
MCD45A1 shoes higher values in Temperate continental forest and Temperate steppe. In
subtropical biomes, PROBA-V reported considerable higher values in the subtropical desert,
subtropical mountain system and subtropical steppe. In tropical biomes, the MODIS product
reports higher values especially tropical dry forest and tropical moist deciduous forest. The
contribution of those biomes to the total burned areas reported by MODIS MCD45A1 has been
identified principally in Africa (as discussed in the previous section). The results show that whilst
burned area totals may be of the same order, they may be distributed across different biomes.
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Figure 22: Comparison between PROBA-V (January-December) and MODIS MCD45A1 (JanuaryNovember) products for grouped biomes during 2015
It is important to note that MODIS reported missing data for Central and South America, for several
weeks and across most biomes listed above during July and November 2015 (Figure 2). It is
difficult to resolve the impact of each biome but there is likely to be an underestimation by MODIS
when considering year to year trends.
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4.4
COMPARISON WITH COPERNICUS EMERGENCY SERVICE PRODUCTS (EMS) AND EFFIS
Table 6 details the fire event maps from Copernicus Emergency Management Service used to
compare MODIS MCD45A1 and PROVA-V BA products.
Table 6. List of fire events maps from the EMS used for comparison with PROBA-V GL and MODIS
products
Country
Hungary
Spain
Spain
Spain
Location
Date
Scale
Area
Nádudvar
Quesada
Montan
Acebo
24/Jul/2015
05/Jul/2015
07/Jul/2015
06/Aug/2015
1:21000
1:5000
1:11000
1:11000
1248,5 Has
21294 Has
426,3 Has
8178.1 Has
The EMS fire events reported in Nádudvar-Hungary during July and August were not identified by
MODIS MCD45A1 product but PROBA-V accurately identified two events as shown in Figure 23.
Figure 23: Fire event in Hungary reported by EMS and detected pixels reported by PROBA 1Km
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EMS reported and mapped a fire occurred in Quesada-Spain on 5th July 2015. The fire was
detected by PROBA-V product but no by MODIS product (Figure 24).
Figure 24. Fire event in Quesada-Spain reported by EMS and detected pixels reported by PROBA 1km
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EMS reported and mapped a fire occurred in Montan-Spain on the 7th July 2015. The fire was
detected by PROBA-V product but no by MODIS product (Figure 25).
Figure 25: Fire event in Montan-Spain reported by EMS on 7th July 2015 and detected pixels reported
by PROBA-V product. MODIS product did not register this event
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On the 6th of August 2015, a fire mapped by EMS reported 8,178 Ha affected by fire in AceboSpain. The burned area was not detected by MODIS MCD41 but PROBA-V product detected it
(Figure 26).
Figure 26: Fire event in Acebo-Spain reported by EMS on 6th August 2015 and detected pixels
reported by PROBA-V product
EFFIS data sets were used to identify common detected burned areas for several European
countries (Table 7). EFFIS data reported burned areas that were detected during 2015. For
operational purposes, burned areas are not normally mapped in the winter months in Europe. The
comparison includes MODIS and PROBA-V products. All products tended to report significant
higher areas than the EFFIS product, although for a number of countries the estimates for PROBAV are reasonably close e.g. Croatia, Albania, UK. Analysis of the MODIS and PROBA-V product
over Romania found that over 9,500 and nearly 6,000 km² of burned area was detected
respectively in August 2015 alone, when EFFIS reports 73 km². Figure 27 presents a graphical
comparison of the three products.
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Table 7. Burned areas comparison between EFFIS, PROBA-V 1Km and MODIS products for countries
with high fire activities during January – December 2015 (km2). * means that Syria is new to the
analysis in 2015.
Albania
Algeria
Bos&Her
Croatia
Cyprus
Cyrpus
France
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Moroco
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Spain
Syria*
Tunisia
Sweden
Turkey
United Kingdon
TOTAL
EFFIS
PROBA 1km MODIS
(Jan-Dec)
(Jan-Nov)
38
46
47
371
737
150
67
191
79
81
247
2
6
1,249
21
718
723
108
317
840
68
17
97
78
1,535
3,558
6
2,410
0
4
0
0
110
16
6
379
216
475
1,267
1,185
73
5,832
9,518
636
3,293
6,471
933
1,064
62
8
1
57
10
551
987
4,172
21
40
29
3,679
14,754
32,788
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Figure 27: Burned areas comparison between EFFIS, PROBA-V 1Km and MODIS MCD45A1 products
for countries with high fire activities during January – December 2015 (km2)
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5 CONCLUSIONS
Fire affected area detected by PROBA-V GL product was assessed during 2015 via a comparison
with MODIS MCD45A1 product at continental/global and biome levels. The correspondence of the
MODIS and PROBA-V products were tested against very high resolution mapped areas (EMS and
EFFIS) of fire events in Europe during 2015.
As reported previously, the PROBA-V product has been improved via two operations. The first was
to optimise the latitudinal mask to remove commissioned pixels in northern hemisphere winters.
The second was to implement an annual repeat fire season reset on the 1st April. This operation
mitigates the requirement for the repeat fire reset to be solely dependent on the region of interest
being in a fire season. We saw an instantaneous improvement in the results when benchmarked
against MODIS products that have been shown through a validation to better characterise the
nature of global vegetation fire activity. Results generated into 2015 are shown to still be very
representative of patterns of global fire activity.
The burned area products derived from PROBA-V data are compliant with the product specification
requirements and are evaluated against the user requirements. They continue to meet
expectations over geographical coverage, properties and definition. When benchmarked against
the MODIS burned area products the PROBA-V products correspond better in a number of regions
and biomes. They do not suffer from the same level of commission in northern latitudes during
winter periods that was found to be a problem with the SPOT-VGT sensor in the validation report.
At a continental scale, all three products showed that the strongest contribution to global
vegetation activity were those occurring in Africa and Asia. Fires in southern Africa dominated
during the summer months of 2015.
At a global scale, MODIS and PROBA-V products reported similar total values of burned area. The
highest contribution of the MODIS products comes from Africa and Asia meanwhile PROBA-V
reported higher values for every month in Europe, Oceania and the Americas.
For most of the tropical biomes, MODIS MCD45A1 reported considerable higher values, especially
for the tropical dry forest and tropical moist deciduous forest. For most of the subtropical biomes,
PROBA-V reported higher values. We need to keep in mind the missing data reported by MODIS
during August and September 2015 as well as for the whole globe for December 2015. We have
no indications from the MODIS Science Team as to the reason for this despite asking these
questions.
For this report, the comparison of GL products with very high resolution maps of fire events in
Europe provided by Copernicus Emergency Management Service was limited to four events. For
all events PROBA-V accurately detected all of them. On the other hand, the MODIS product did
not detect these four specific events.
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Finally, the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) fire maps in Europe were compared
against the MODIS MCD45A1 and PROBA-V products for the period of study. Differences are
observed between the three products for individual countries.
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6 REFERENCES
BOSCHETTI, L., ROY, D., HOFFMANN, A. and HUMBER, M., 2013. MODIS Collection 5.1 Burned
Area Product - MCD45. User's Guide. Version 3.0.1. User Guide edn.
FAO, 2000. Global ecofloristic zones mapped by the United Nations Food and Agricultural
Organization. adapted by Ruesch, Aaron,and Holly K. Gibbs. 2008.
SMITH, R., ADAMS, M., MAIER, S., CRAIG, R., et al., 2007. Estimating the area of stubble
burning from the number of active fires detected by satellite, Remote Sensing of Environment, 109,
95–106.
TANSEY, K., GREGOIRE, J-M., STROPPIANA, D., SOUSA, A., et al., 2004. Vegetation burning in
the year 2000: Global burned area estimates from SPOT VEGETATION data. Journal of
Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, 109, D14S03, doi:10.1029/2003JD003598.
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7 ANNEX 1
Annex 1a. PROBA-V 1km (Jan-Dec) and MODIS MCD45A1 (Jan-Nov) products in Boreal and Polar biomes - 2015
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Annex 1b. PROBA-V 1km (Jan-Dec) and MODIS MCD45A1 (Jan-Nov) products in Subtropical biomes - 2015
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Temperate continental
forest
60000
40000
20000
0
Jan…
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Ago
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Area (Km2)
80000
PROBA V
MODIS
Annex 1c. PROBA-V 1km (Jan-Dec) and MODIS MCD45A1 (Jan-Nov) products in Temperate biomes - 2015
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Annex 1d. PROBA-V 1km (Jan-Dec) and MODIS MCD45A1 (Jan-Nov) products in Tropical biomes - 2015
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