Accurate and complete data on fire locations and burned areas are needed to quantify trends and patterns of fire occurrence, characterize drivers of fire occurrence, projections of future fire pattern behavior, and help with assessments of fire impacts on both natural and social systems.
Collection 2 Burned Area
Products created from data acquired 1984 - present for Landsat 4-5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+, and Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS. Landsat 9 will be added in 2023.
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The Landsat Level-3 Burned Area Science Product, designed to identify burned areas across all ecosystems (e.g., forests, shrublands, and grasslands), contains two acquisition-based raster files that represent burn classification and burn probability.
The table below displays how different communities use the Landsat Burned Area science product in their research.
| Community | Potential Use |
|---|---|
| Carbon cycling research (e.g., Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Forest Carbon Tracking, USGS Carbon Sequestration) | Tracking carbon from living and dead vegetation and coal/humus states into atmospheric states |
| Wildland resource management agencies and groups (including US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, BLM Alaska Fire Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Fish and Wildlife Service) | Planning and management of fire occurrence on managed lands |
| Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) | Locations of burned areas for additional severity analysis |
| LANDFIRE | Fire hazard evaluation, disturbance characterization, change tracking |
| Fire research (e.g., National Interagency Fire Center, Office of Wildland Fire) | 30 meter product of history and extent of fire locations |
| Agricultural, grasslands, and prairie research (including GEO Agriculture, US Forest Service, Agricultural Research Service, some Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER) sites) | Grasslands and prairie research, cropland and prairie burning extent, history, and use |
| Committee on Earth Observations from Space (CEOS) Land Product Validation Working Group for Burned Area Validation Protocols | Validation and/or verification of alternative burned area products |
| Climate research | Tracking of greenhouse gas generation, and fire activity as an indicator or symptom of changes in climate |
| Global Observation of Forest Cover and Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) | Fire management, emissions estimation and smoke trace gas monitoring, the role of fire in the carbon budget, and burned area product validation of other systems |
The animations and image below are examples of how Burned Area displays areas damaged by fire.
