A burned area database from Sentinel-2 imagery (2016-2022) for Madagascar, southern Mozambique, Eswatini and eastern South Africa

This database includes georeferenced burned area at 20 m and fire dates covering the period 2016-2022 for Madagascar, southern Mozambique (Maputo, Maputo City, Gaza, Inhambane), Eswatini, and eastern South Africa (Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape). The classification of burned areas has been done based on 165,833 Sentinel-2 scenes (2A and 2B), by applying a two-phased algorithm on the probability output of a random forest model. The product has been validated in Madagascar with long temporal reference burned area units distributed into two fire activity strata. The accuracy analysis performed for the years 2019 and 2021 revealed a Dice coefficient of ≥79%, commission errors ≤18% and omission error ≤24% with a relative bias of about -8%. Intercomparisons with other available burned area products (FireCCISFD11, FireCCISFD20, GABAM, FireCCI51, C3SBA11, MCD64) indicated a consistent performance throughout the entire period. The product is provided in shapefiles, divided into four-month periods. Each shapefile contains a field named “BurnDate” indicating the date when the burned area was detected in format YYYYMMDD. Missing values indicate areas that were not burned, while zero values represent areas that were not considered in the mapping process due to persistent pixel low quality conditions.

Funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) in the framework of the project "Fire regimes and ecosystem services in African biodiversity hotspots: can fire policies favoring climate change mitigation, biodiversity and local communities converge?"

Peer reviewed