Fire Danger Observed from Space
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Fire Danger Observed from Space M. Lucrecia Pettinari1 · Emilio Chuvieco1 Received: 18 December 2019 / Accepted: 6 August 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Biomass burning is one of the critical components of the Earth system, significantly affecting atmospheric emissions and carbon budgets. Fires occurring in the interface between wildland and urban areas also have important socioeconomic effects, affecting people’s lives and resources. Even though fires are natural in many ecosystems, climate and societal changes have recently caused particularly severe fire seasons (Australia, California, Amazonia, Portugal…). Mitigating the negative impacts of fire requires further efforts to assess fire danger conditions. Satellite Earth observation provides considerable capabilities to evaluate the different variables involved in fire danger. Data obtained from remote sensors offer information on possible sources of fire ignition, on fuel status and abundance, and on the topography and the meteorological conditions that will affect fire spread. Satellite observations also provide near-real-time information on fire occurrence for early response teams. This article describes the different variables affecting fire danger and illustrates how satellite data can offer useful information to estimate these variables, focusing on global and continental fire danger systems. Keywords Fire hazard · Fire danger · Remote sensing · Fire causes · Active fires · Fire danger information systems
1 Fire in the Earth system Fire has been present in the Earth system since the origin of plants, playing a key role in plant adaptation and ecosystem distribution (Pausas and Keeley 2009). With the emergence of humans on Earth, the causes of fire ignition increased and fire regimes changed, as vegetation burning became an integral form of agriculture, traditional pastoralism and hunting practices (Pyne 1995; Pyne and Goldammer 1997). Even today, fires are used for a variety of purposes, such as the clearing of forests and savannahs for agriculture and grazing, removing unpalatable grasses, stubble and waste removal after harvest, shifting agriculture, hunting, and production of charcoal (Levine et al. 1995; Shlisky et al. 2007).
* M. Lucrecia Pettinari [email protected] 1
Environmental Remote Sensing Research Group, University of Alcala, Calle Colegios 2, Alcalá de Henares 28801, Spain
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Surveys in Geophysics
Wildland fires are an important driver of environmental transformation, affecting the Earth system in many different and, at the same time, interlinked ways. Even though fires have many positive impacts on biodiversity and plant succession (Archibald et al. 2018), they also imply increasing soil erosion and runoff, water quality degradation, and in many cases end in deforestation and land cover change (Cano-Crespo et al. 2015; Eva and Lambin 2000). They are also recognized as a critical factor affecting carbon budgets and greenhouse gas emissions (Jones et al. 2019; Thonicke et al. 2010; van de
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