Publications

Laurent, P; Mouillot, F; Yue, C; Ciais, P; Moreno, MV; Nogueira, JMP (2018). Data Descriptor: FRY, a global database of fire patch functional traits derived from space-borne burned area products. SCIENTIFIC DATA, 5, 180132.

Abstract
Vegetation fires are intrinsic ecosystem disturbances of the Earth system. Global burned area products have been delivered from several space-borne instruments, and have recently provided pixel-level information underpinning fire spread processes. Here we present FRY, a global database of fire patches with morphology-based functional traits reconstructed from pixel-based burned areas derived from the MODIS and MERIS imagery using a flood-fill algorithm. Each fire patch is characterized by the geo-location of its center, area, perimeter, the features of the ellipse fitted over its pixel's spatial distribution, and different indices of patch complexity. We obtained a consistent spatial distribution of global fire patch functional traits between the MCD64A1 Collection 6 and the MERIS fire_cci v4.1 datasets during their overlap period (2005-2011), confirming the robustness of the applied algorithm and the consistency between both products. This database is relevant to a broad spectrum of fire-related applications such as local to global functional pyrodiversity, fire emissions quantification, and the benchmarking of fire modules embedded in dynamic global vegetation models.

DOI:
10.1038/sdata.2018.132

ISSN:
2052-4463