Abstract:

These data are used to represent the spatial, temporal and thermal characteristics of wildfires in southeast Louisiana beginning in 2003 and extending until 2011. The fire detection points are placed at the centroids of the 1km*1km MODIS grid cells and contain the date collected as well as the derived Fire Radiative Potential which was used to represent intensity. Graphs of normalized and non-normalized wildfire detection frequency were created to examine the temporal trends associated with wildfires in both the marine wetland environment as well southeast Louisiana in general. These temporal trends were useful in identifying periods of peak wildfire activity as well as defining a fire season or seasons to be used in both in statistical analysis of wildfire intensity as well as the kernel density maps. This data was also created in support of a GoMRI Year One grant and is also registered with GRIIDC as dataset Y1.x103.000:0002.

Suggested Citation:

Cooke, William. 2015. Wildfire Radiative Power, Detection Confidence, Mean and Maximum Brightness band, derived from Cumulative MODIS fire detection, Louisiana 2003-2011.. Distributed by: GRIIDC, Harte Research Institute, Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. doi:10.7266/N7H993MW

Purpose:

This study intended to allow the identification of ‘hotspots’ of marsh degradation and the extent of recovery (if any) post Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. The overall goal of the proposed research was to quantify and map the ecological impact of the oil spill on the photosynthetic activity, physiological status, and primarily productivity of the coastal salt marshes to facilitate the prioritization of future restoration actions.

Data Parameters and Units:

(All files) Julian Date – Day of observation – unitless MAX_FRP – Max fire radiative power of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Megawatts MW) MEAN_FRP - Mean fire radiative power of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Megawatts MW) MAX_CONFID - Max fire detection confidence of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point - (unitless) MEAN_CONFID - Mean fire detection confidence of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point - (unitless) (For years 2003-2008) MAX_T21 – Max brightness temperature of band 21 (4 micron band) of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin) MEAN_T21 – Mean brightness temperature of band 21 (4 micron band) of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin) MAX_T31 – Max brightness temperature of band 31 (11 micron band) of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin) MEAN_T31 – Mean brightness temperature of band 31 (11 micron band) of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin) (For years 2009-2011) MAX_TEMP - Max measured brightness temperature of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin) MEAN_TEMP - Mean measured brightness temperature of all fires for that day within 2km radius of point – (Degrees Kelvin)

Methods:

MODIS fire detection data were obtained from the Remote Sensing Application Center. The fire detection points are placed at the centroids of the 1km2 MODIS grid cells and contain the date collected as well as the derived Fire Radiative Potential which was used to represent intensity. Since the MODIS system detection marks individual pixels as fire or non-fire, a method was needed to consolidate the fire detections into a dataset more representative of actual wildfire frequency. Two kilometer buffers were created in ArcGIS around each of the fire detection locations. The internal buffer lines that result from the buffering process dissolved based on the date of detection so that all suspected fire detections within a 2 km radius occurring on the same day were counted as single fires. The maximum FRP value from the previous unaltered fire detections was chosen to represent the thermal properties of each fire when dissolving into the new feature. The ‘feature to point’ GIS function was used to place a point at the center of the dissolved buffer to more accurately portray the location of the fire

Provenance and Historical References:

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectoradiometer (MODIS) fire product

Individual Files: