A new paper, led by GEOG Assistant Research Professor Dong (Tony) Chen, has been published in Remote Sensing. The study found that the two commonly-used burned area products, MCD64A1 and FireCCI51 products, considerably underestimate burned areas in the circumpolar boreal forests and tundra ecosystems. This may have been caused by the global algorithms used by these products not being able to account for the unique environmental conditions in the circumpolar regions. This means that research projects and models relying on global burned area products as data inputs may underestimate wildfires' impacts in the high northern latitude regions. The study shows that ABBA, a burned area product that is also based on MODIS inputs but is regionally adjusted (developed by GEOG Professor Tatiana Loboda), seems to provide a much more reliable performance than the global products do. The paper thus calls for the development of more products like ABBA that provide better characterizations of the wildfires regimes in the high northern latitudes, a region that plays a key role in the global climate system. 

Full paper: https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13204145