Mapping Wildfires in Southern Belize – the case for analysis ready data (ARD)
Savanna based ecosystems across the world are suffering increasingly from wildfires due to climate change and illegal human activities. In many regions, this puts the fragile ecosystems under threat, so mapping the extent of wildfires becomes important to enable the organisation of mitigation measures.
Recently, Environment Systems supported a Masters student from the University of Edinburgh School of GeoSciences, Chris Halliday, in a project that sought to investigate a new approach to mapping savannas. An 1,800 km2 area of Southern Belize was chosen as the area of study. The area was chosen because it suffers from extensive wildfires, which destroy saplings, the habitats of nesting birds, and cause a general decline in biodiversity. Three ‘Protected Areas’ within this area are designated to protect key savanna species.
Currently, the burnt areas of savanna are mapped annually at the end of the dry season in May by visual interpretation of Sentinel-2 optical imagery. This method requires cloud-free imagery, which is not always available. In addition, the timing is not optimal due to rapid savanna regrowth. Radar data, which can penetrate cloud, is not generally used to map burnt areas of savanna as few land managers have the required expertise to handle this data source.
