Burnt area mapping in insular Southeast Asia using medium resolution satellite imagery

................................................................................................3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................4 LIST OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES ................................................5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ..........................................................6 ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................. 7 INTRODUCTION ................................................................... 9 Vegetation fires in tropical regions ................................................................................ 9 Monitoring of the occurrence and effects of vegetation fires ......................................... 9 General ..................................................................................................................... 9 Active fire detection ................................................................................................. 10 Burnt area mapping ................................................................................................. 10 Characteristics of insular Southeast Asia as a fire region ............................................. 14 Climate and nature .................................................................................................. 14 Fires in insular Southeast Asia ............................................................................... 16 Special features from the burnt area detection point of view ................................. 17 Objective and structure of the study ............................................................................. 18 MATERIALS AND METHODS ............................................................... 18 Satellite data .................................................................................................................. 18 Medium and coarse resolution data ........................................................................ 18 High resolution reference data ............................................................................... 20 Land cover and soil maps ............................................................................................. 21 Data analysis ................................................................................................................. 23 Analysis on fire-induced spectral changes (I) ........................................................ 23 Evaluation of multitemporal compositing methods (III) ........................................ 26 Investigation of burn scar patterns and size distribution (IV) ................................ 27 Assessment of the usability of super-resolution MODIS images (V) ...................... 28 MAIN RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ..................................................... 28 Fire-induced spectral changes (I, II, IV) ...................................................................... 28 Multitemporal compositing for burnt area mapping (III) ............................................. 32 Variability of fire regimes and its effect on burnt area mapping (II, IV) ..................... 34 Usability of the super-resolution images (V) ................................................................ 38 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................ 39 REFERENCES ........................................................................................... 41