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Abstract
Biomass burning is a common force in much of the developing tropical world and has wide-ranging environmental impacts. Fire is an important component in tropical deforestation and is often used to clear broad expanses of land for shifting agriculture, dispose of crop residue, and "clean" pastures for cattle grazing. It is part of a complex social phenomenon driven by human population expansion, national economics, foreign debt, land speculation, tax incentives, colonization, and political forces (Fearnside 1987; Hecht and Cockburn 1990). Biomass burning has an important role in the annual fluxes to the troposphere of many trace gases (Crutzen et al. 1979). However, only rough estimates of the contribution of biomass burning to the tropospheric trace-gas budget are available (Robinson 1988). In this chapter we present the capabilities and limitations of satellite data for characterizing biomass combustion. A new aircraft scanner technology is discussed that incorporates high resolution, extended dynamic range, and high-temperature calibration. Data obtained during a prescribed fire in the Brazilian cerrado are used to demonstrate the system's capabilities and to characterize important fire parameters for issues of global change.
Citation
Brass, James A.; Guild, Liane S.; Riggan, Philip J.; Ambrosia, Vincent G.; Lockwood, Robert N.; Joao, A. Pereira, Higgins, Robert G. 1996. Characterizing Brazilian fire and estimating areas burned by using the Airborne Infrared Disaster Assessment System. In: Levine, J.S. (ed.) Biomass Burning and Global Change: Vol. 2 Biomass Burning in South America, Southeast Asia, and Temperate and Boreal Ecosystems, and the Oil Fires of Kuwait. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 561-568.
