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. 2017 Jul 5;7(1):4181.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03739-0.

Size-dependent validation of MODIS MCD64A1 burned area over six vegetation types in boreal Eurasia: Large underestimation in croplands

Chunmao Zhu  1 , Hideki Kobayashi  2   3 , Yugo Kanaya  2   3 , Masahiko Saito  2
Affiliations

Size-dependent validation of MODIS MCD64A1 burned area over six vegetation types in boreal Eurasia: Large underestimation in croplands

Chunmao Zhu et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Pollutants emitted from wildfires in boreal Eurasia can be transported to the Arctic, and their subsequent deposition could accelerate global warming. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) MCD64A1 burned area product is the basis of fire emission products. However, uncertainties due to the "moderate resolution" (500 m) characteristic of the MODIS sensor could be introduced. Here, we present a size-dependent validation of MCD64A1 with reference to higher resolution (better than 30 m) satellite products (Landsat 7 ETM+, RapidEye, WorldView-2, and GeoEye-1) for six ecotypes over 12 regions of boreal Eurasia. We considered the 2012 boreal Eurasia burning season when severe wildfires occurred and when Arctic sea ice extent was historically low. Among the six ecotypes, we found MCD64A1 burned areas comprised only 13% of the reference products in croplands because of inadequate detection of small fires (<100 ha). Our results indicate that over all ecotypes, the actual burned area in boreal Eurasia (15,256 km2) could have been ~16% greater than suggested by MCD64A1 (13,187 km2) when applying the correction factors proposed in this study. This implies the effects of wildfire emissions in boreal Eurasia on Arctic warming could be greater than currently estimated.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Distributions of 12 validation regions in boreal Eurasia over a wide range of vegetation types. Landsat 7 ETM+ reference images are numbered in black. Reference images from commercial satellite products are numbered in red. Only the major vegetation types studied in this work are labelled. Vegetation type data are from the MODIS MCD12Q1 product. Detailed information of the 12 regions is presented in Table S1. The figure is created using QGIS 2.14.0 (http://www.qgis.org).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Fire occurrence in the reference satellite products as a function of fire size shown by (a) fire polygon count and (b) percentage of burned area in the region (burned area fraction). Dotted line in (a) indicates the boundary of fire counts for fires of 100 ha. Dashed and dashed–dotted lines in (b) indicate the boundaries of burned area percentage for fires of 500 and 2000 ha, respectively.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Fire count detection rate and burned area detection rate of MCD64A1 in boreal Eurasia shown as a function of (a) vegetation type and (b) fire size (only for burned area detection rate). Horizontal bar in (a) indicates the average burned area detection rate of the corresponding vegetation type.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Burned area map showing a comparison of MCD64A1 and Landsat 7 ETM+ products for croplands in region id 1 in Fig. 1.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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