Characterization of the Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Global Fire Activity Using Satellite Imagery for the Period April 1992 to March 1993.

Twenty one months of global, daily, daytime acquired satellite data at 1 km resolution, from April 1992 to December 1993 have been processed to give the positions of active vegetation fires. Two methods of characterizing the spatio-temporal pattern of vegetation fire and discussed. the first applies principal component analysis to the monthly series of fire count products. The second approach defines and extracts a number of spatial and temporal parameters from the gridded product. Thee of these parameters are used in a clustering procedure. The two characterizations, while emphasising different aspects, synthesise the main spatio-temporal characteristics of global fire distributions. Keywords: vegetation fire, global fire patterns, principal component analysis, remote sensing of fire.JRC.(SAI)-Space Application Institut