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Wetland burned area extent derived from Sentinel-2 across the southeastern U.S. (2016-2019)

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Wildfires and prescribed fires are frequent but under-mapped across wetlands of the southeastern United States . High annual precipitation supports rapid post-fire recovery of wetland vegetation, while associated cloud cover limits clear-sky observations. In addition, the low burn severity of prescribed fires and spectral confusion between fluctuating water levels and burned areas have resulted in wetland burned area being chronically under-estimated across the region. In this analysis, we first quantify the increase in clear-sky observations by using Sentinel-2 in addition to Landsat 8. We then present an approach using the Sentinel-2 archive (2016-2019) to train a wetland burned area algorithm at 20 m resolution. We coupled a Python-derived random forest model with Google Earth Engine to apply the algorithm across the southeastern United States (>290,000 km2). The burned area extent was validated (burned, unburned) using points derived from 27 WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 images. The burned area extent was compared to 555 wetland fire perimeters compiled from state and federal agencies. On an annual timestep, combining the Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 data increased the mean observation count from 17 to 46 in 2016 and from 16 to 78 in 2019. When validating single-scene burned area extent, the Sentinel-2 output had 29% and 30% omission and commission error rates, respectively. We compared this to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 Burned Area Product (L8 BA), which had 47% and 8% omission and commission error rates, respectively. Across the four-year period, by count the Sentinel-2 burned area detected 78% of the wetland fire perimeters, compared to the L8 BA which detected 60% of the wetland fire perimeters. By area, Sentinel-2 burned area mapped 48% of the perimeter area as burned, compared to the L8 BA which mapped 32% of the perimeter area as burned. This analysis demonstrated the potential of Sentinel-2 to support efforts to track burned area extent even across challenging ecosystem types, such as wetlands.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/19e2f9fc8a1b4a2522d1819b18353fa7
Identifier USGS:603d2d6ed34eb1203117ef8f
Data Last Modified 20210826
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id af7b135a-eccf-4c9b-b2a0-ad26ab893a46
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -89.067582,24.995905,-78.594114,34.405121
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash b5ca45f80a877af0e389b778078e02d046d0cc334cfa36329609f1f86ecc8b12
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -89.067582, 24.995905, -89.067582, 34.405121, -78.594114, 34.405121, -78.594114, 24.995905, -89.067582, 24.995905}

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