Detection of burned areas from mega-fires using daily and historical MODIS surface reflectance

The detection and mapping of burned areas from wildland fires is one of the most important approaches for evaluating the impacts of fire events. In this study, a novel burned area detection algorithm for rapid response applications using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 500 m surface reflectance data was developed. Spectra from bands 5 and 6, the composite indices of the Normalized Burn Ratio, and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index were employed as indicators to discover burned pixels. Historical statistical data were used to provide pre-fire baseline information. Differences in the current (post-fire) and historical (pre-fire) data were input into a support vector machine classifier, and the fire-affected pixels were detected and mapped by the support vector machine classification process. Compared with the existing MODIS level 3 monthly burned area product MCD45, the new algorithm is able to generate burned area maps on a daily basis when new data become available, which is more applicable to rapid response scenarios when major fire incidents occur. The algorithm was tested in three mega-fire cases that occurred in the continental USA. The experimental results were validated against the fire perimeter database generated by the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group and were compared with the MCD45 product. The validation results indicated that the algorithm was effective in detecting burned areas caused by mega-fires.