COMPARISON OF FIRES DETECTED BY SATELLITE AND IN-SITU DATA IN SCANDINAVIA

We compared fires detected by different satellite systems with in-situ data mainly for Finland from year 2002 to year 2005. We had access to fires detected by the Finnish detection system for AVHRR images developed by VTT (Technical Research Centre of Finland), the MODIS based system developed by NASA and the University of Maryland, and the (A)ATSR based system developed by ESA. For in-situ data, we have at our disposal the database of reported Finnish fires and information about fires detected by the VTT system. We found that very few fires detected by satellite can be matched with fires from in-situ data or fires from other satellite systems. Furthermore, most of the hot spots are from controlled burning and are not reported in the Finnish fire database