The potential of SPOT-Vegetation data for fire scar detection in boreal forests

Boreal forests cover 10% of the land surface and experience wide ranges of temperature and precipitation. In many parts of the boreal zone, fire drive s vegetation succession, landscape dynamics and carbon cycling. Global clim ate change may affect the frequency and size of wildfires and alter the rat e of carbon release into the atmosphere. Monitoring changes in fire frequen cy are therefore vital for forest management and predicting climate change impacts. The continuity of remotely sensed data, combined with the extent a nd remoteness of the boreal ecosystem make Earth observation an important t ool for fire monitoring. This Letter examines the applicability of data fro m SPOT-Vegetation for regional fire monitoring in the context of other avai lable Earth observation instruments. We show that use of the middle-infrare d waveband gives a more reliable indication of fire scars than vegetation i ndex approaches currently employed.