Dear Sipongi members
we are glad to announce the redesign of
the "MODIS Active Fire & Burned Area Homepage". You find the homepage under:
http://modis-fire.umd.edu Mapping the timing and the extent of fires is
important as fire is a prominent change agent
affecting ecosystem structure and the cycling of
carbon and nutrients. Notably fire is a
significant cause of forest degradation hence
greenhouse gas emissions. The availability of
robustly calibrated, atmospherically corrected,
cloud-screened, geolocated data provided by the
latest generation of moderate resolution remote
sensing systems allows for major advances in
satellite mapping of fire affected area. A
complementary MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectrometer) algorithm defined to map fire
affected area has been developed and the first
MODIS Global Burned Area product (MCD45) is now being generated.
The redesign intends to have improved user
friendliness of access of the MCD45A1 Global
Burned Area data. The homepage allows now FTP
retrieval of the first Global Burned Area product
available from 2000 onwards in GeoTIFF and HDF
format. The two available formats are geared to
meeting the wide-ranging needs of the diverse
user community in science and fire management
applications. The GeoTIFFs, loadable into a
GIS, are reprojected in Plate-Carrée projection
and cover a set of sub-continental windows to reduce file size.
The entire MODIS Burned Area Product is
comprehensively described in a user guide
available at the homepage . We hope to ensure
continuous improvement of the product and its
applications with your help. Therefore feedback
on overall speed, easiness of password and data
access, and other comments or questions to
improve orientation on the homepage and data is welcome.
Please send your feedback, comments and questions
to MODIS Fire User Support -
modis-fire@hermes.geog.umd.edu We are grateful if you further forward this
information to potential fire data users of your
professional networks and knowledge.
Best regards
MODIS Fire Team
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Anja A. Hoffmann
Uhlandstr. 15
74889 Sinsheim
Germany
Telephone : +49-(0)7261-728477
Cell: +49-(0)177-6077461
Fax: +49- (0)3212-8855117
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