Mapping forest burned area using MODIS data in China

The burned area is an important parameters for modelling the carbon cycles. The remote sensing tenology is a only way to monitor it at large scale region. In general, two temporal vegetation index difference was used to detect the burned area. But this technology is difficult to be applied to large-scale region owing to the BRDF effect, atmospheric contamination, geolocation errors, phenological changes, vegetation regrowth and others. In this paper, a new approach was proposed to detect the burned area using, MODIS data, which is based on the vector-change technology, and combines the MODIS 5(H) and 250 meter resolution bands data to find 250 meter resolution burned area. The method adequately uses the spectral and multi-spatial resolution character of MODIS data that can resist the noise pollution and improve the detection accuracy. The detection results are very corresponding with the visual interpretation under different background. Since the method needs no prior knowledge, it could also be applied in large region scale. Based on this algorithm, the burned area dataset covering all China from 2000 to 2004 were produced