A new global burned area product for climate assessment of fire impacts

Aim This paper presents a new global burned area (BA) product developed within the framework of the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme, along with a first assessment of its potentials for atmospheric and carbon cycle modelling. Innovation Methods are presented for generating a new global BA product, along with a comparison with existing BA products, in terms of BA extension, fire size and shapes and emissions derived from biomass burnings. Main conclusions Three years of the global BA product were produced, accounting for a total BA of between 360 and 380 Mha year-1. General omission and commission errors for BA were 0.76 and 0.64, but they decreased to 0.51 and 0.52, respectively, for sites with more than 10% BA. Intercomparison with other existing BA datasets found similar spatial and temporal trends, mainly with the BA included in the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED4), although regional differences were found (particularly in the 2006 fires of eastern Europe). The simulated carbon emissions from biomass burning averaged 2.1 Pg C year-1

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Global Ecology and Biogeography

• Publication date

  2016-05-01

• Fields of study

  Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/GEB.12440
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Global burned area mapping from ENVISAT-MERIS and MODIS active fire data

  2015influential reference
• Decadal trends in global CO emissions as seen by MOPITT

  2015cited by this paper
• Sensitivity of global terrestrial carbon cycle dynamics to variability in satellite‐observed burned area

  2015influential reference
• Fire evolution in the radioactive forests of Ukraine and Belarus: future risks for the population and the environment

  2015cited by this paper
• Global fire size distribution is driven by human impact and climate

  2015influential reference
• Comparing the accuracies of remote sensing global burned area products using stratified random sampling and estimation

  2015influential reference
• Validation of the 2008 MODIS-MCD45 global burned area product using stratified random sampling

  2014cited by this paper
• Ten years of global burned area products from spaceborne remote sensing - A review: Analysis of user needs and recommendations for future developments

  2014influential reference
• Modelling the role of fires in the terrestrial carbon balance by incorporating SPITFIRE into the global vegetation model ORCHIDEE – Part 2: Carbon emissions and the role of fires in the global carbon balance

  2014cited by this paper
• SPITFIRE within the MPI Earth system model: Model development and evaluation

  2014cited by this paper
• Spatial attributes of fire regime in eastern Canada: influences of regional landscape physiography and climate

  2014cited by this paper
• Divergent responses of fire to recent warming and drying across south‐eastern Australia

  2014influential reference
• Integration of ecological and socio-economic factors to assess global vulnerability to wildfire

  2014cited by this paper
• Modelling the role of fires in the terrestrial carbon balance by incorporating SPITFIRE into the global vegetation model ORCHIDEE – Part 1: simulating historical global burned area and fire regimes

  2014cited by this paper
• The ESA Climate Change Initiative: Satellite Data Records for Essential Climate Variables

  2013influential reference
• Analysis of daily, monthly, and annual burned area using the fourth‐generation global fire emissions database (GFED4)

  2013cited by this paper
• Dynamic biomass burning emission factors and their impact on atmospheric CO mixing ratios

  2013influential reference
• Defining pyromes and global syndromes of fire regimes

  2013cited by this paper
• Spatial Characterization of Wildfire Orientation Patterns in California

  2013cited by this paper
• Global burned area and biomass burning emissions from small fires

  2012influential reference
• Quantifying the role of fire in the Earth system – Part 1: Improved global fire modeling in the Community Earth System Model (CESM1)

  2012cited by this paper
• Quantifying the role of fire in the Earth system – Part 1 : Improved global fire modeling in the Community Earth System Model ( CESM 1 )

  2012cited by this paper
• Impacts of land cover and climate data selection on understanding terrestrial carbon dynamics and the CO 2 airborne fraction

  2011cited by this paper
• The Global Extent and Determinants of Savanna and Forest as Alternative Biome States

  2011cited by this paper
• Biomass burning emissions estimated with a global fire assimilation system based on observed fire radiative power

  2011cited by this paper
• The impacts and implications of an intensifying fire regime on Alaskan boreal forest composition and albedo

  2011cited by this paper
• Global patterns of land-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide, latent heat, and sensible heat derived from eddy covariance, satellite, and meteorological observations

  2011cited by this paper
• Postfire energy exchange in arctic tundra: the importance and climatic implications of burn severity

  2011cited by this paper
• Southern African Fire Regimes as Revealed by Remote Sensing

  2010cited by this paper
• Global fire emissions and the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural, and peat fires (1997-2009)

  2010cited by this paper
• What limits fire? An examination of drivers of burnt area in Southern Africa

  2009cited by this paper
• An active-fire based burned area mapping algorithm for the MODIS sensor

  2009influential reference
• Assessing variability and long-term trends in burned area by merging multiple satellite fire products

  2009cited by this paper
• Global Pyrogeography: the Current and Future Distribution of Wildfire

  2009cited by this paper
• The collection 5 MODIS burned area product — Global evaluation by comparison with the MODIS active fire product

  2008cited by this paper
• GlobCover: ESA service for global land cover from MERIS

  2007cited by this paper
• Arctic smoke record high air pollution levels in the European Arctic due to agricultural fires in Eastern Europe

  2006cited by this paper
• A dynamic global vegetation model for studies of the coupled atmosphere‐biosphere system

  2005influential reference

• Burned area mapping across the Arctic-boreal zone with Landsat and Sentinel-2 imagery

  2026cites this paper
• Faster, better, and more accurate mapping of burned areas using Sentinel-2 multispectral images

  2026cites this paper
• A comprehensive assessment of the FireCCILT11 global burned area product

  2025cites this paper
• Validation of National and Global Satellite-Derived Products for Mapping Burned Areas in Russia

  2025cites this paper
• Restoring fire regimes through rewilding.

  2025cites this paper
• 3D-ABC: A Foundation Model for Global Terrestrial 3D above and below Ground Carbon Stock Mapping

  2025cites this paper
• Efeitos de diferentes épocas de queima prescrita em árvores de Hancornia speciosa Gomes

  2025cites this paper
• Burned Area Detection in the Eastern Canadian Boreal Forest Using a Multi-Layer Perceptron and MODIS-Derived Features

  2025cites this paper
• A global expert elicitation on present-day human–fire interactions

  2025cites this paper
• Efeito de diferentes regimes de fogo em Caryocar brasiliense Cambess. (pequizeiro) na escala de paisagem

  2025cites this paper
• Combining ecophysiology and combustion traits to predict conifer live fuel moisture content: a pyro-ecophysiological approach

  2025cites this paper
• The Evolution of Global Surface Ammonia Concentrations during 2001-2019: Magnitudes, Patterns, and Drivers.

  2025cites this paper
• Multifactorial interactions contribute to contrasting wildfire trends at mid–high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere

  2025cites this paper
• Burned Areas Mapping Using Sentinel-2 Data and a Rao’s Q Index-Based Change Detection Approach: A Case Study in Three Mediterranean Islands’ Wildfires (2019–2022)

  2025cites this paper
• Progress and challenges in remotely sensed terrestrial carbon fluxes

  2024cites this paper
• Europe faces up to tenfold increase in extreme fires in a warming climate

  2024cites this paper
• Segmentation of Any Fire Event (SAFE): A Rapid and High-Precision Approach for Burned Area Extraction Using Sentinel-2 Imagery

  2024cites this paper
• Exploring spatiotemporal dynamics of NDVI and climate-driven responses in ecosystems: Insights for sustainable management and climate resilience

  2024cites this paper
• Estimating fuel load for wildfire risk assessment at regional scales using earth observation data: A case study in Southwestern Australia

  2024cites this paper
• Annual and Seasonal Patterns of Burned Area Products in Arctic-Boreal North America and Russia for 2001-2020

  2024cites this paper
• Modernizing the US National Fire Danger Rating System (version 4): Simplified fuel models and improved live and dead fuel moisture calculations

  2024cites this paper
• The Canadian Fire Spread Dataset

  2024cites this paper
• Using a Cultural Keystone Species in Participatory Monitoring of Fire Management in Indigenous Lands in the Brazilian Savanna

  2024cites this paper
• A global forest burn severity dataset from Landsat imagery (2003–2016)

  2024cites this paper
• Suitability of band angle indices for burned area mapping in the Maule Region (Chile)

  2023cites this paper
• Fire refugia are robust across Western US forested ecoregions, 1986–2021

  2023cites this paper
• IMPACTO ENTRE QUEIMADAS E ALTERAÇÕES NO AUMENTO DE INTERNAÇÕES POR DOENÇAS RESPIRATÓRIA NO ESTADO DE RONDÔNIA.

  2023cites this paper
• SCADDA: Spatiotemporal Cluster Analysis With Density‐Based Distance Augmentation and Its Application to Fire Carbon Emissions

  2023cites this paper
• Burned area detection and mapping using time series Sentinel-2 multispectral images

  2023cites this paper
• Assessing tree crown fire damage integrating linear spectral mixture analysis and supervised machine learning on Sentinel-2 imagery

  2023cites this paper
• A Clustering Approach for Remotely Sensed Data in the Western United States

  2023cites this paper
• Satellite observed response of fire dynamics to vegetation water content and weather conditions in Southeast Asia

  2023cites this paper
• Object-Based Burned Area Mapping with Extreme Gradient Boosting Using Sentinel-2 Imagery

  2023cites this paper
• Burnt-Net: Wildfire burned area mapping with single post-fire Sentinel-2 data and deep learning morphological neural network

  2022cites this paper
• The influence of thinning and prescribed burning on future forest fires in fire-prone regions of Europe

  2022cites this paper
• Climate drivers of global wildfire burned area

  2022cites this paper
• Post‐fire soil extracellular enzyme activities in subtropical–warm temperate climate transitional forests

  2022cites this paper
• Towards a whole‐system framework for wildfire monitoring using Earth observations

  2022cites this paper
• A System for Burned Area Detection on Multispectral Imagery

  2022cites this paper
• Weather pattern associated with climate change during Canadian Arctic wildfires: A case study in July 2019

  2022cites this paper
• Regional-scale burned area mapping in Mediterranean regions based on the multitemporal composite integration of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data

  2022cites this paper
• Evaluation of Fire Products Using Spatio-Temporal Clustering Method

  2022cites this paper
• Assessing the Accuracy of MODIS MCD64A1 C6 and FireCCI51 Burned Area Products in Mediterranean Ecosystems

  2022cites this paper
• The wildland-urban interface in the United States based on 125 million building locations.

  2022cites this paper
• Analysis of Pauri Garhwal Forest Fire Burned Area for the Years 2015–2019—A Case Study

  2022cites this paper
• Study on Spatial-Distribution Characteristics Based on Fire-Spot Data in Northern China

  2022cites this paper
• Interannual variability and climatic sensitivity of global wildfire activity

  2021cites this paper
• How Well Do We Understand the Land‐Ocean‐Atmosphere Carbon Cycle?

  2021cites this paper
• Estimation of post-fire vegetation recovery in boreal forests using solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) data

  2021cites this paper
• Assessment of k-Nearest Neighbor and Random Forest Classifiers for Mapping Forest Fire Areas in Central Portugal Using Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and Terra Imagery

  2021cites this paper
• Potential of Sentinel-1 C-Band Time Series to Derive Structural Parameters of Temperate Deciduous Forests

  2021cites this paper
• Spatio-temporal characterization of landscape fire in relation to anthropogenic activity and climatic variability over the Western Himalaya, India

  2021cites this paper
• Rapid warming has resulted in more wildfires in northeastern Australia.

  2021cites this paper
• ESA Climate Change Initiative – Fire_cci D2.1.4 Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) – Small Fires Dataset (SFD)

  2021cites this paper
• ESA Climate Change Initiative – Fire_cci D2.1.1 Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document: SAR-Optical

  2021cites this paper
• Unfolding the contribution of environmental and anthropogenic variables in forest fire over western Himalayan fire regime

  2021cites this paper
• Assessment of Wildfire Activity Development Trends for Eastern Australia Using Multi-Sensor Earth Observation Data

  2021cites this paper
• Mapping Cropland Burned Area in Northeastern China by Integrating Landsat Time Series and Multi-Harmonic Model

  2021cites this paper
• Global intercomparison of functional pyrodiversity from two satellite sensors

  2021cites this paper
• Accuracy estimation of two global burned area products at national scale

  2021cites this paper
• Implementation of the Burned Area Component of the Copernicus Climate Change Service: From MODIS to OLCI Data

  2021cites this paper
• A Preliminary Global Automatic Burned-Area Algorithm at Medium Resolution in Google Earth Engine

  2021cites this paper
• ABWiSE v1.0: toward an agent-based approach to simulating wildfire spread

  2021cites this paper
• Evaluation and comparison of Sentinel-2 MSI, Landsat 8 OLI, and EFFIS data for forest fires mapping. Illustrations from the summer 2017 fires in Tunisia

  2021cites this paper
• Missing Burns in the High Northern Latitudes: The Case for Regionally Focused Burned Area Products

  2021cites this paper
• Histórico, avaliação, oportunidades e desafios do manejo integrado do fogo nas terras indígenas brasileiras

  2021cites this paper
• ABWiSE v1.0: Toward and Agent-Based Approach to Simulating Wildfire Spread

  2021cites this paper
• A Burned Area Mapping Algorithm for Sentinel-2 Data Based on Approximate Reasoning and Region Growing

  2021cites this paper
• Flood Hazard Assessment Mapping in Burned and Urban Areas

  2021cites this paper
• Modeling long-term fire impact on ecosystem characteristics and surface energy using a process-based vegetation–fire model SSiB4/TRIFFID-Fire v1.0

  2020influential citation
• Assessing the Shape Accuracy of Coarse Resolution Burned Area Identifications

  2020cites this paper
• A spatio-temporal active-fire clustering approach for global burned area mapping at 250 m from MODIS data

  2020cites this paper
• Fire dynamics in Mato Grosso State, Brazil: the relative roles of gross primary productivity

  2020cites this paper
• Burned Area Detection and Mapping: Intercomparison of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Based Algorithms over Tropical Africa

  2020cites this paper
• Burning savanna for avian species richness and functional diversity.

  2020cites this paper
• Wildland fire risk research in Canada

  2020cites this paper
• Sources of Uncertainty in Regional and Global Terrestrial CO2 Exchange Estimates

  2020cites this paper
• A long-term assessment of fire regimes in a Brazilian ecotone between seasonally dry tropical forests and savannah

  2020cites this paper
• Sentinel-1 observation frequency significantly increases burnt area detectability in tropical SE Asia

  2020cites this paper
• Comparison of forest above‐ground biomass from dynamic global vegetation models with spatially explicit remotely sensed observation‐based estimates

  2020cites this paper
• The Landsat Burned Area algorithm and products for the conterminous United States

  2020cites this paper
• Assessing satellite-derived fire patches with functional diversity trait methods

  2020cites this paper
• Climate-driven risks to the climate mitigation potential of forests

  2020cites this paper
• ESA Climate Change Initiative – Fire_cci D2.1.2 Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (ATBD) – Sentinel-3

  2020cites this paper
• Remote Sensing of Environmental Drivers Influencing the Movement Ecology of Sympatric Wild and Domestic Ungulates in Semi-Arid Savannas, a Review

  2020cites this paper
• The interactive global fire module pyrE (v1.0)

  2020cites this paper
• Automated Burned Scar Mapping Using Sentinel-2 Imagery

  2020cites this paper
• FIRED (Fire Events Delineation): An Open, Flexible Algorithm and Database of US Fire Events Derived from the MODIS Burned Area Product (2001-2019)

  2020cites this paper
• MOSEV: a global burn severity database from MODIS (2000–2020)

  2020cites this paper
• Small fires, frequent clouds, rugged terrain and no training data: a methodology to reconstruct fire history in complex landscapes

  2020cites this paper
• About Validation-Comparison of Burned Area Products

  2020cites this paper
• Modeling long-term fire impact on ecosystem characteristics and surface energy using a process-based vegetation-fire model SSiB 4 / TRIFFID-Fire v 1 . 0

  2020cites this paper
• Introduction

  2020cites this paper
• Sentinel-1 observation frequency significantly increases burnt area detectability in tropical SE Asia

  2020cites this paper
• Linking fire and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

  2019cites this paper
• Self-Adjusting Thresholding for Burnt Area Detection Based on Optical Images

  2019cites this paper
• Temporal Decorrelation of C-Band Backscatter Coefficient in Mediterranean Burned Areas

  2019cites this paper
• Global analysis of burned areas for climate assessment: experiences from the Fire_CCI project

  2019cites this paper
• An Assessment of Surface and Atmospheric Conditions Associated with the Extreme 2014 Wildfire Season in Canada’s Northwest Territories

  2019cites this paper
• Varying relationships between fire radiative power and fire size at a global scale

  2019cites this paper