Defining a Fire Year for Reporting and Analysis of Global Interannual Fire Variablility

The interannual variability of fire activity has been studied without an explicit investigation of a suitable starting month for yearly calculations. Sensitivity analysis of 37 months of global MODIS active fire detections indicates that a 1-month change in the start of the fire year definition can lead, in the worst case, to a difference of over 6% and over 45% in global and subcontinental scale annual fire totals, respectively. Optimal starting months for analyses of global and subcontinental fire interannual variability are described. The research indicates that a fire year starting in March provides an optimal definition for annual global fire activity

Strategies for the Fusion of Satellite Fire Radiative Power with Burned Area Data for Fire Radiative Energy Derivation

Instantaneous estimates of the power released by a fire (Fire Radiative Power, FRP) are available with satellite active fire detection products. Integrating FRP in time provides an estimate of the total energy released (Fire Radiative Energy, FRE), which can be converted into burned biomass estimates needed by the atmospheric emissions modeling community. While straightforward in theory, the integration of FRP in time and space is affected by temporal and spatial undersampling imposed by the satellite sensing and orbit geometry, clouds, and active fire product omission errors. Combination of active fire FRP estimates with independently derived burned area maps provides the potential for improved 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 FRE across the burn are proposed and, as a study case, applied to an extensive grassland fire that burned for 40 days in northern Australia. The fusion of FRP estimates derived from MODIS Terra and Aqua active fire detections with the MODIS burned area product is considered, although other polar orbiting and geostationary satellite fire products could be used. Intercomparison of FRE estimated over the MODIS mapped burned area using Terra, Aqua, and Terra-Aqua combined FRP data highlights the sensitivity of FRE estimation to satellite sampling. Despite this sensitivity, FRE biomass burned estimates derived from MODIS burned area and Terra and Aqua FRP data are within 30% of regional literature estimates, suggesting that this fusion approach is a fruitful avenue for future research and validation

Space market uptake in Europe

The launch of the European Union (EU) Space Policy in 2007 gave a new momentum to the implementation of the two European space flagship programmes Copernicus (Earth Observation) and Galileo (GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite System). Whereas Galileo is still in its deployment phase, Copernicus has already entered the exploitation phase. So far, roughly EUR 6 billion have been funded by the EU for the design and development of the two programmes and more than EUR 11 billion have been earmarked in the 2014-2020 programming period. Key rationales for EU intervention in the space sector include: i) the need to develop an independent European space satellite infrastructure, ii) the advantage of putting together resources and expertise from ESA and Member States, and iii) the opportunity to benefit from the development of a satellite-based services and products that would contribute to the achievement of the Europe 2020 objectives

Separability Analysis of Sentinel-2A Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) Data for Burned Area Discrimination

: Biomass burning is a global phenomenon and systematic burned area mapping is of increasing importance for science and applications. With high spatial resolution and novelty in band design, the recently launched Sentinel-2A satellite provides a new opportunity for moderate spatial resolution burned area mapping. This study examines the performance of the Sentinel-2A Multi Spectral Instrument (MSI) bands and derived spectral indices to differentiate between unburned and burned areas. For this purpose, five pairs of pre-fire and post-fire top of atmosphere (TOA reflectance) and atmospherically corrected (surface reflectance) images were studied. The pixel values of locations that were unburned in the first image and burned in the second image, as well as the values of locations that were unburned in both images which served as a control, were compared and the discrimination of individual bands and spectral indices were evaluated using parametric (transformed divergence) and non-parametric (decision tree) approaches. Based on the results, the most suitable MSI bands to detect burned areas are the 20 m near-infrared, short wave infrared and red-edge bands, while the performance of the spectral indices varied with location. The atmospheric correction only significantly influenced the separability of the visible wavelength bands. The results provide insights that are useful for developing Sentinel-2 burned area mapping algorithms

La ‘Galassia MQDQ:’ un concetto di filologia tradizionale, digitale, sostenibile

The investigation of intertextuality within a corpus of Latin poetry is the main objective of the research functions of the so-called ‘Musisque Deoque Galaxy’: formular recurrences, and lexical and metric-verbal co-occurrences draw a dense network of relationships between texts, where poetic memory presents itself in various modalities. This contribution aims to analyse the latest developments in the “Musisque Deoque Galaxy” both from the point of view of the tools created to enable new textual acquisitions and new analyses, and from the technological point of view, with reference to the work carried out to ensure a long-term sustainability

A high-resolution, integrated system for rice yield forecasting at district level

To meet the growing demands from public and private stakeholders for early yield estimates, a high-resolution (2 km × 2 km) rice yield forecasting system based on the integration of the WARM model and remote sensing (RS) technologies was developed. RS was used to identify rice-cropped area and to derive spatially distributed sowing dates, and for the dynamic assimilation of RS-derived leaf area index (LAI) data within the crop model. The system—tested for the main European rice production districts in Italy, Greece, and Spain—performed satisfactorily; >66% of the inter-annual yield variability was explained in six out of eight combinations of ecotype × district, with a maximum of 89% of the variability explained for the ‘Tropical Japonica’ cultivars in the Vercelli district (Italy). In seven out of eight cases, the assimilation of RS-derived LAI improved the forecasting capability, with minor differences due to the assimilation technology used (updating or recalibration). In particular, RS data reduced uncertainty by capturing factors that were not properly reproduced by the simulation model (given the uncertainty due to large-area simulations). The system, which is an extension of the one used for rice within the EC-JRC-MARS forecasting system, was used pre-operationally in 2015 and 2016 to provide early yield estimates to private companies and institutional stakeholders within the EU-FP7 ERMES project

Implementaion of Regional Burnt Area Algorithms for the GBA2000 initiative

Technical Report - Global Burnt Area 200

A global inventory of burned areas at 1km resolution for he year 2000 derived from spot vegetation data

Biomass burning constitutes a major contribution to global emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, greenhouse gases and aerosols. Furthermore, biomass burning has an impact on health, transport, the environment and land use. Vegetation fires are certainly not recent phenomena and the impacts are not always negative. However, evidence suggests that fires are becoming more frequent and there is a large increase in the number of fires being set by humans for a variety of reasons. Knowledge of the interactions and feedbacks between biomass burning, climate and carbon cycling is needed to help the prediction of climate change scenarios. To obtain this knowledge, the scientific community requires, in the first instance, information on the spatial and temporal distribution of biomass burning at the global scale. This paper presents an inventory of burned areas at monthly time periods for the year 2000 at a resolution of 1 kilometer (km) and is available to the scientific community at no cost. The burned area products have been derived from a single source of satellite-derived images, the SPOT VEGETATION S1 1 km product, using algorithms developed and calibrated at regional scales by a network of partners. In this paper, estimates of burned area, number of burn scars and average size of the burn scar are described for each month of the year 2000. The information is reported at the country level. This paper makes a significant contribution to understanding the effect of biomass burning on atmospheric chemistry and the storage and cycling of carbon by constraining one of the main parameters used in the calculation of gas emissions