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Improving the National Emissions Inventory for Fires: The Impact of Non-Fire Sources in the MODIS Active Fire Product
Citation:
Pouliot, G., J. Beidler, J. Hall, AND L. Giglio. Improving the National Emissions Inventory for Fires: The Impact of Non-Fire Sources in the MODIS Active Fire Product. 2018 AGU Fall Meeting, DC, Washington, December 10 - 14, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Since Biomass burning has been identified as an important contributor to the degradation of air quality, having an accurate emission inventory of this emission source is important. The key research question being investigated is how the fires can be accurately identified with MODIS instrument and to reduce the number of false detections from non-fire sources, notably industrial sources. We plan to use the results of the research to improve the quality of the fire detections that are used as a basis for future emission inventories of biomass burning over the United States.
Description:
Biomass burning has been identified as an important contributor to the degradation of air quality because of its impact on ozone and particulate matter. The Hazard Mapping System (HMS) dataset has been available from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as an operational product from 2003 to the present. EPA has been using this dataset as well as other datasets to develop wildfire and prescribed fire emission inventories for multiple years using the SMARTFIRE information system. The SMARTFIRE information system is a framework for aggregating, associating, and reconciling wildland fire information from disparate sources. In the HMS dataset, fires are detected from multiple satellite sensors. One sensor that is used for detecting and locating fires is the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) which is located on two polar orbiting satellites (Aqua and Terra). Researchers have noted a prevalence and abundance of fire detections along the southern Louisiana coast that do not appear to be realistic. An analysis of the HMS MODIS detections over the southern Louisiana coast has identified this dataset as the source of the anomalous fire detections. The HMS MODIS detections are not the only satellite product currently available. Reprocessing of the entire MODIS data archive is periodically performed to incorporate better calibration, algorithm refinements, and improved upstream data into all MODIS products. However, even the current MODIS Collection 6 fire detection product still contains static non-fire emission sources that need to be filtered out in the algorithms. In this paper, we will use information about static anthropogenic point sources from EPA's national emission inventory to help inform and ultimately improve the identification of such sources in the MODIS Collection 6 active fire product.
