Australasian Wildland Fire Characteristics Retrieved from BIRD Satellite Sensor Data

The growing influence of wildfire on the ecosystem of the Earth is still not investigated sufficiently because there is a lack of measurement data obtained globally by satellites. The Bi-spectral Infrared Detection (BIRD) micro-satellite of the German Aerospace Center is the first dedicated precursor to help to close this gap. BIRD was piggy back launched with an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle into a 570 km polar sun-synchronous orbit on October 22, 2001. BIRD is providing unique data sets allowing the retrieval of quantitative wildfire characteristics, such as equivalent fire temperature, fire area, and fire radiative energy release. The paper presents BIRD wildfire recognition results for the Australasian region