Satellite remote sensing of active fires: Impact of clouds
It has been long time since passive satellite observations in visible and thermal part of the spectrum have been used to monitor and quantify the biomass burning over global areas. Space sensors such as AVHRR, MODIS, and GOES are some of the examples, which continuously monitor vegetation fires under clear sky conditions. But, these sensors are limited to cloud free conditions and there could be large errors in estimation of fire activities due to lack of sampling under cloudy conditions. Remote Sensing of Environment published a research article entitled “ Quantifying the impact of cloud obscuration on remote sensing of active fires in the Brazilian Amazon ” by Wilfrid Schroeder and coauthors discuss the bias in remote sensing fire data due to possible cloud cover during fire activities over Brazilian Amazon. The abstract read as “Vegetation fires remain as one of the most important processes governing land use and land cover change in tropical areas. The large area extent of fire pr...