Satellite hydrology observations as operational indicators of forecasted fire danger across the contiguous United States

Farahmand, Alireza; Stavros, E. Natasha; Reager, John T.; Behrangi, Ali; Randerson, James T.; Quayle, Brad

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1097-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1097-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-1097-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 4

Research article

|

24 Apr 2020

Research article |

| 24 Apr 2020

Satellite hydrology observations as operational indicators of forecasted fire danger across the contiguous United States

Alireza Farahmand, E. Natasha Stavros, John T. Reager, Ali Behrangi, James T. Randerson, and Brad Quayle

Data sets

Burned area with small fires GFED (Global Fire Emissions Database) https://www.globalfiredata.org/data.html

National Land Cover Database 2011 MRLC (Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics) https://www.mrlc.gov/data

AIRS/Aqua L3 Monthly Standard Physical Retrieval (AIRS-only) 1 degree x 1 degree V006 NASA https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/data/get_data

GRACE-based Surface Soil Moisture Drought Indicator NASA-NDMC (National Drought Mitigation Center) https://nasagrace.unl.edu

Short summary

Wildfires result in billions of dollars of losses each year. Most wildfire predictions have a 10 d lead-time. This study introduces a framework for a 1-month lead-time prediction of wildfires based on vapor pressure deficit and surface soil moisture in the US. The results show that the model can successfully predict burned area with relatively small margins of error. This is especially important for operational wildfire management such as national resource allocation.