Evaluation of a technique for satellite‐derived area estimation of forest fires

Satellite data have been used increasingly during the past few years to examine burning around the globe. One such satellite instrument, the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR), has been found useful for the location and monitoring of both smoke and fires because of the daily observations, the large geographical coverage of the imagery, the spectral characteristics of the instrument, and the spatial resolution of the instrument. Earlier studies using AVHRR imagery have focused on locating and monitoring fires and studying the characteristics of smoke. This paper will discuss the application of AVHRR data to assess the geographical extent of burning. Methods have been developed to estimate the surface area of burning by analyzing the surface area effected by fire with AVHRR imagery. Characteristics of the AVHRR instrument, its orbit, field of view, and archived data sets are discussed relative to the unique surface area of each pixel. The errors associated with this surface area estimation technique are determined using AVHRR‐derived area estimates of target regions with known sizes. This technique is used to evaluate the area burned during the Yellowstone fires of 1988.