African burned area and fire carbon emissions are strongly impacted by small fires undetected by coarse resolution satellite data.

ABSTRACT: Fires are a major contributor to atmospheric budgets of greenhouse gases and aerosols, affect soils and vegetation properties, and are a key driver of land use change. Since the 1990s, global burned area (BA) estimates based on satellite observations have provided critical insights into patterns and trends of fire occurrence. However, these global BA products are based on coarse spatial-resolution sensors, which are unsuitable for detecting small fires that burn only a fraction of a satellite pixel. We estimated the relevance of those small fires by comparing a BA product generated from Sentinel-2 MSI (Multispectral Instrument) images (20-m spatial resolution) with a widely used global BA product based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images (500 m) focusing on sub-

SUBMITTER: Ramo R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7936338 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature