Boschetti, Luigi

Roy, David

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1 Department of Natural Resources and Society, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844, USA 
2 Department of Geography, Environment & Spatial Sciences and Center for Global Change and Earth 
Observations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. E-mail para contato 
roydavi1@msu.edu ,  luigi@uidaho.edu 
 
 Número Especial: 7a Conferência Internacional sobre Incêndios Florestais - Resumos 
 
 
  
The fire year: definition of an optimal time interval  for 
the analysis and reporting of global fire  activity 
 
Luigi Boschetti1 and David P. Roy2 
 
 
 
ABSTRACT-  Inter-annual variability of fire activity is generally studied without explicit 
investigation of a suitable starting month for yearly calculations.  Most studies use the calendar 
year, i.e. starting in January, while those that use a different starting month do so without explicit 
justification.  In various scientific fields, annual periods are often not defined to start in January. 
For example, in hydrology the year is often considered to start with the beginning of the major 
precipitation season and to end in the subsequent dry season. Aggregating annual precipitation 
data using this definition, allows for the generation of more consistent yearly statistics as the major 
rainy season precipitation is aggregated together, and so there is less “carry over” among 
consecutive years.  The same properties are desirable for inter-annual fire analysis.  A “fire year” 
defined with similar criteria means that the analysis of fire inter-annual variability is also the 
analysis of the variability between fire seasons, which in turn may be more unambiguously linked 
to other climatological events. We initially introduced the concept of fire year based on the 
analysis of 37 months of global MODIS active fire detections (Boschetti and Roy, 2008). In the 
present paper, we revisit the fire year definition by considering the entire record (2002-2018) of 
the most recent MODIS Collection 6 global burned area product (Giglio et al., 2018). We examine 
the sensitivity of yearly fire calculations made with respect to changing the starting month of the 
calendar year definition, the impact of using inappropriate starting months, and suggest optimal 
starting months for analyses of global and select sub-continental scale fire inter-annual variability. 
Optimal starting months for analyses of global and sub-continental fire inter-annual variability are 
described. The research indicates that a fire year starting in April provides an optimal definition 
for annual global fire activity. 
 
Keywords: Global fire regimes; remote sensing; MODIS; fire activity reporting 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The fire year: definition of an optimal time interval for the analysis and reporting of global fire activity

http://www.icmbio.gov.br/revistaeletronica/index.php/BioBR/article/download/1090/823

The fire year: definition of an optimal time interval for the analysis and reporting of global fire activity

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