As earth system science studies increasingly recognize and include fire as an important process in the terrestrial carbon cycle, there is a growing need for long term, spatially- and…

This is a grant award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of Maryland, College Park to develop a Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) burned area product that will continue the 17-year Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) record into the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (SNPP) and Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) era. The $345,163 grant will fund the completion of the existing prototype VNP64A1 production code, algorithm tuning, product generation, quality assessment, product intercomparison, validation, and data distribution. The mapping approach is based on the existing MODIS Collection 6 MCD64A1 burned area mapping algorithm. There is no set-aside designation for this grant. The University of Maryland, College Park is the prime recipient, and the award is supported by the University System of Maryland, the public higher education system for the state of Maryland.

As earth system science studies increasingly recognize and include fire as an important process in the terrestrial carbon cycle, there is a growing need for long term, spatially- and temporally-explicit global burned area data sets. The advent of nasas terra and aqua satellites has enabled, for the first time, systematic production of high quality, multi-year, 500-M global burned area maps using observations from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS). Both the global modeling community and the fire applications community are using these data extensively. Furthermore, interest in quantifying changing fire regimes because of increasing human settlement in fire prone areas and a warming climate make the development of a long-term observational burned area record a priority. A critical step in the establishment of a long-term global fire record is the continuity from the aging MODIS instruments to the current suomi national polar-orbiting partnership (S-NPP) and forthcoming joint polar satellite system (JPSS) visible infrared imaging radiometer suite (VIIRS). The VIIRS instrument is now used to produce a number of standard thematic data products developed to provide information about the earths oceans, land, and atmosphere. While the current NASA VIIRS land product suite is slated to include a burned area product, major delays in the implementation of several critical upstream components within nasas land sips made IT impossible to generate the VNP64A1 product under the previous three-year funding cycle. With this continuation proposal we plan to bring the burned area esdr to fruition. We propose to complete the development of a VIIRS burned area product that will continue the 17-year MODIS record into the suomi NPP and JPSS ERA and form the basis for a climate data record. The mapping approach is based on the existing collection 6 MCD64A1 burned-area mapping algorithm developed by our team for MODIS, with an emphasis on data consistency and continuity. The proposal will include completing the existing prototype VNP64A1 production code, algorithm tuning, product generation within the NASA land sips, quality assessment, product intercomparison with the equivalent MODIS product, validation, and data distribution