Evaluation of the causes of error in the MCD45 burned-area product for the savannas of northern South America [Evaluación de las causas de error en el producto de área quemada MCD45 para las sabanas del norte de Suramérica]

Forest fires contribute to deforestation and have been considered a significant source of CO2 emissions. There are global maps that estimate the area affected by a fire using the reflectance variation of the surface. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and the causes of error of the MCD45 Bu...

Full description

Autores:
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2012
Institución:
Universidad de Medellín
Repositorio:
Repositorio UDEM
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.udem.edu.co:11407/1400
Acceso en línea:
http://hdl.handle.net/11407/1400
Palabra clave:
Burned area
Forest fires
MCD45
Orinoco
Rights
restrictedAccess
License
http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
Description
Summary:Forest fires contribute to deforestation and have been considered a significant source of CO2 emissions. There are global maps that estimate the area affected by a fire using the reflectance variation of the surface. In this study, we evaluated the reliability and the causes of error of the MCD45 Burned Area Product, by applying the confusion matrix method to the Orinoco River Basin. This basin is located in the northern zone of South America, and consists mainly of savanna ecosystems. For the evaluation, we used as reference data five pairs of Landsat images, covering 165,000 km2. The Burned Area Product estimated a burned area of 7,576.43 km2, which is lower than the area of 12,100.16 km2 found with Landsat images, leading to an overall underestimation. The causes of error are associated to the spatial resolution of the map, and to some structures of the algorithm that generates the map.