Strategies for the fusion of satellite fire radiative power with burnedarea data for fire radiative energy derivation

摘要

Instantaneous estimates of the power released by a fire (Fire Radiative Power, FRP) areavailable with satellite active fire detection products. Integrating FRP in time providesan estimate of the total energy released (Fire Radiative Energy, FRE), which can beconverted into burned biomass estimates needed by the atmospheric emissions modelingcommunity. While straightforward in theory, the integration of FRP in time and spaceis affected by temporal and spatial undersampling imposed by the satellite sensing andorbit geometry, clouds, and active fire product omission errors. Combination of active fireFRP estimates with independently derived burned area maps provides the potential forimproved and spatially explicit estimates of FRE and biomass burned. In the present work,strategies for the temporal interpolation of FRP data and for the spatial extrapolation of FREacross the burn are proposed and, as a study case, applied to an extensive grassland firethat burned for 40 days in northern Australia. The fusion of FRP estimates derived fromMODIS Terra and Aqua active fire detections with the MODIS burned area product isconsidered, although other polar orbiting and geostationary satellite fire products could beused. Intercomparison of FRE estimated over the MODIS mapped burned area using Terra,Aqua, and Terra-Aqua combined FRP data highlights the sensitivity of FRE estimationto satellite sampling. Despite this sensitivity, FRE biomass burned estimates derived fromMODIS burned area and Terra and Aqua FRP data are within 30% of regional literatureestimates, suggesting that this fusion approach is a fruitful avenue for future research andvalidation.