A multi-sensor approach to fine-scale fire characterization

* Corresponding author. Abstract – Recent improvements in sensor capabilities have enabled fire characterization from satellites. Instantaneous intensities of active fires have been characterized by the Fire Radiative Power (FRP), while burn severity has been assessed from the evaluation of Normalized Burn Ratios (NBR) derived from preand post-fire multispectral imagery. MODIS on the Terra and Aqua satellites enables FRP retrievals at a global scale. However, the 1km sub-satellite resolution is too coarse to account for fine scale spatial heterogeneities that are often typical of the burning process. The high resolution (15-90m) ASTER is flown on the Terra satellite, and can be used to determine the location of the active fire front within the MODIS footprint. In this study several fire events in North America were analyzed. MODIS FRP values, localized using ASTER, were combined with burn severity data derived from collocated 30m Landsat TM (Thematic Mapper) and ETM+ (Enhanced Thematic Mapper) imagery for a more complete characterization of the burning process.