FEMM—Fire Effects Modelling and Mapping : an approach to estimate the spatial variability of burning efficiency

Abstract

Burning efficiency, defined as the percentage of biomass consumed by the fire, plays a key role in the estimation of the amount of gases released from the biomass burning process. Traditionally this parameter was assigned to a vegetation class as a constant value. However, different levels of damage, also called burn severity, may occur within an area affected by fire. This affects the amount of biomass consumed by burning. Consequently, the burning efficiency coefficients should vary accordingly to the levels of damage presented in the burned area. The approach described in this study estimates the burning efficiency values adjusting the burning efficiency coefficients by vegetation type found in the literature to the level of damage computed from MERIS images. This study focused in two big f ires occurred in Spain in 2009. The burning efficiency maps generated highlighted the overestimation produced when the level of damage is not considered in the burning efficiency estimation.