HR: 1340h
AN: B43B-0272    [Abstracts]
TI: Agricultural Burning in the Southeastern United States Detected by MODIS
AU: * McCarty, J L
EM: mccarty@geog.umd.edu
AU: Justice, C O
EM: justice@hermes.geog.umd.edu
AU: Korontzi, S
EM: stef@hermes.geog.umd.edu
AB: The southeastern United States, including the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, has a high occurrence of fire activity as detected by MODIS. The spatio-temporal analysis of the 1 km MODIS TERRA Active Fire Product (MOD 14) from 2001 to 2004 shows that agricultural burning in the southeastern United States accounts for an average of 16 percent of annual fire activity. In addition, the southeastern region contributes an average of 33 percent of all agricultural burning in the contiguous United States. Crop types that most likely burn in the southeast include rice, winter wheat, sugarcane, soybean and cotton. Much of the agricultural burning occurs in June and from October to January and is related to the harvest of winter wheat and rice in the spring and the harvest of sugarcane, soybean and cotton in the fall and winter. The results show that cropland burning is spatially dependent on crop type and temporally dependent on management practices (planting/harvesting). Three states represent more than 75 percent of all agricultural burning in the southeast: Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana. A 250 m MODIS land cover map cover was created for these three states using a decision tree classification. Compared to the MODIS 1 km Land Cover Dataset (MOD 12) (Friedl et al., 2002), the 250m classified images contain on average 50 percent more cropland area and improve the estimation of cropland area based on validation from ground control sites of croplands. Results from the decision tree classification for each state suggest that in 2004 agricultural burning contributed 73 percent, 54 percent, and 33 percent of total fires for Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana, respectively.
DE: 0402 Agricultural systems
DE: 0480 Remote sensing
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005