A MODIS-based burned area assessment for Russian croplands: Mapping requirements and challenges

AbstractAlthough agricultural burning is banned in Russia, it is still a widespread practice. Accurately monitoring cropland burned area is an important task as these estimates are used in the calculation of cropland burning emissions, which are ultimately utilized in policy making decisions. In this paper we developed an independent estimate of cropland burning in Russia through assessing the capabilities of global burned area products (MCD45A1; Roy et al., 2008 and MCD64A1; Giglio et al., 2009) and our own custom Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) based Cropland Regional Area Burned (CRAB) product. An archive of cropland field state samples was generated from very high resolution (