Assessment of burned areas in Mato Grosso State, Brazil, from a systematic sample of medium resolution satellite imagery

This paper presents a method for mapping and assessing burned areas at a regional scale, using a systematic sample of medium spatial resolution satellite images (Landsat). The State of Mato Grosso, located in the Brazilian Amazon region, comprising an area of pproximately 903,366 km², was selected for this study. 77 sample sites (20km × 20km in size) located at each full degree confluence of latitude and longitude were analyzed. The results showed that 52,663 km² or approximately 5.8% of the State land cover was burned in 2010. Our method produced results comparable with PanAmazonia Project data and useful for evaluating burned area products based on coarse spatial resolution imagery like MODIS or SPOT-VEGETATION.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat