Christopher O Justice
University of Maryland College Park
Dept of Geography
2181 LeFrak Hall
College Park, MD 20742

E-mail: justice@hermes.geog.umd.edu
Phone: 301-405-1600
Fax: 301-614-6503

The intent of this proposal is to undertake the following tasks:

1. To monitor the performance of the MODIS Burned Area Product generated under Collection 5.
2. Continue to undertake product validation to complete a Stage 2 Validation using high resolution image pairs and following the CEOS LPV protocol. Emphasis will be given to those regions previously not well addressed e.g. USA, China, Europe, India. Active cooperation will build on the product validation initiatives with regional scientists established through the GOFC/GOLD program and the CEOS LPV. The use of alternative sources of high resolution data other than Landsat 7 will be investigated. This task will include an inter comparison with the ESA Globscar product.
3. Develop and implement any necessary refinements to the code, based on results of Task 2 and develop and evaluate a combined burned area and active fire product to enhance product performance in areas of smaller land use fires and persistent cloud cover.
4. Compile and publish global, national and biome statistics on area burned from 2000-2007. In addition to providing insights into inter annual variability and trends in fire distribution and extent, these results will provide a direct contribution to the Global Fires Assessment being undertaken as part of the UN FAO Forest Resource Assessment 2010.
5. Provide enhanced product access and distribution capabilities in a GIS compatible format to meet the needs of the science and applications communities. This will be undertaken in cooperation with the LAADS system under development at GSFC and the NASA FIRMS project at UMd.
6. Evaluate the feasibility and product consistency and develop and test a procedure for extending the Burned Area ESDR with data from the NPP VIIRS. This task will involve close interaction with the NPP Science Team.
7. Contribute to the international GOFC/GOLD fire coordination effort.

An augmentation module will be included to host an international GOFC/GOLD-CEOS LPV workshop on Burned Area product validation in 2007. This workshop will invite international groups to participate in the product validation.