Validation of the 2008 Landsat Burned Area Ecv Product for North America Using Stratified Random Sampling

Abstract:

The U.S. Geological Survey is generating a suite of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) products, as defined by the Global Climate Observing System, from the Landsat data archive. Validation protocols for these products are being established, incorporating the Committee on Earth Observing Satellites Land Product Validation Subgroup’s best practice guidelines and validation hierarchy stages. The sampling design and accuracy measures follow the methodology developed by the European Space Agency’s Climate Change Initiative Fire Disturbance (fire_cci) project (Padilla and others, 2014). A rigorous validation was performed on the 2008 Burned Area ECV (BAECV) prototype product, using a stratified random sample of 48 Thiessen scene areas overlaying Landsat path/rows distributed across several terrestrial biomes throughout North America. The validation reference data consisted of fourteen sample sites acquired from the fire_cci project and the remaining new samples sites generated from a densification of the stratified sampling for North America. The reference burned area polygons were generated using the ABAMS (Automatic Burned Area Mapping) software (Bastarrika and others, 2011; Izagirre, 2014). Accuracy results will be presented indicating strengths and weaknesses of the BAECV algorithm.
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Izagirre, A.B., 2014, Automatic Burned Area Mapping Software (ABAMS), Preliminary Documentation, Version 10 v4,: Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, University of Basque Country, p. 27.
Padilla, M., Chuvieco, E., Hantson, S., Theis, R., and Sandow, C., 2014, D2.1 - Product Validation Plan: UAH - University of Alcalá de Henares (Spain), 37 p.