ABoVE: Burned Area and Carbon Combustion for Alaska and Canada, 2001-2019

Annual gridded estimates of fire locations, burned area, carbon combustion, and burn depth for Alaska and Canada from 2001 to 2019 at 500-meter resolution. The data were produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration using MODIS and Landsat satellite imagery combined with field observations. It includes quality flags and is designed for studies of disturbance, fire ecology, and carbon cycling in boreal ecosystems.

Use Cases

• Modeling carbon emissions from boreal wildfires based on gridded combustion estimates.
• Analyzing fire severity and burn patterns over time based on annual burned area maps.
• Studying relationships between fire characteristics and environmental predictors like topography and climate.
• Validating and improving regional carbon cycle models based on field-calibrated combustion data.

Strengths

• Covers a 19-year period (2001-2019) for Alaska and Canada.
• Provides multiple derived metrics: burned area, combustion, and burn depth at pixel level.
• Incorporates field observations from Alaska and western Canada for statistical modeling.
• Includes quality flags for burned area and combustion data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the ABoVE extended domain.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Burned area estimated from Landsat imagery using a dNBR algorithm and upscaled; combustion and depth modeled from field data and remote sensing predictors.

Time Range

2001-2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-12 22:03:22.571774; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Alaska and Canada (ABoVE extended domain)