Long-term Burned Area Reconstruction through Deep Learning (Proposals Track)

Seppe Lampe (Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Bertrand Le Saux (European Space Agency (ESA)); Inne Vanderkelen (Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Wim Thiery (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

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Disaster Management and Relief Computer Vision & Remote Sensing

Abstract

Wildfire impact studies are significantly hampered by the absence of a global long-term burned area dataset. This prevents conclusive statements on the role of anthropogenic activity on wildfire impacts over the last century. Here, we propose a workflow to construct a 1901-2014 reanalysis of monthly global burned area at a 0.5° by 0.5° scale. A neural network will be trained with weather-related, vegetational, societal and economic input parameters, and burned area as output label for the 1982-2014 time period. This model can then be applied to the whole 1901-2014 time period to create a data-driven, long-term burned area reanalysis. This reconstruction will allow to investigate the long-term effect of anthropogenic activity on wildfire impacts, will be used as basis for detection and attribution studies and could help to reduce the uncertainties in future predictions.