CALIFORNIA WILDFIRE MAP 2017 CODE

High values of the drought code (DC) and the duff moisture code (DMC), which are components of the FWI, are some of the common factors in the large fires that have recently burned in many regions of the world. Recently, fire danger indicators such as the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) 3 have shown the highest values registered during the last 37 years in many European countries. Climate change is driving some forests into a stressed state 2, reducing the vegetation water content and leading to very prone-fire landscapes where high-severity wildfires could occur. Wildfire regimes are changing, wildfire seasons are becoming longer 1, wildfire average sizes are increasing in many areas of the world and wildfires are happening in areas in which they did not occur in the past. These effects are being exacerbated by the influence of climate change. Wildfires are an important phenomenon at the global scale, as they are responsible for large amounts of economic and environmental damage. The entire product has been computed until the present and is available under the umbrella of the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS). This work describes the data produced by a data mining process using MODIS burnt area product Collection 6 (MCD64A1). Here, we present and test a data mining work flow to create a global database of single fires that allows for the characterization of fire types and fire regimes worldwide. This high level of abstraction is very valuable it makes it possible to characterize fires by types (either size, spread, behaviour, etc.). These data do not provide information like fire size, fire spread speed, how fires may evolve and joint into single event, or the number of fire events for a given area.

Although global fire products based on the use of Earth Observation satellites exist, most remote sensing products only partially cover the requirements for these analyses.

Global fire monitoring systems are crucial to study fire behaviour, fire regimes and their impact at the global scale.

California wildfire map 2017