40-Year Fire History Reconstruction from Landsat Data in a Mediterranean Area of North Africa Following International Standards

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202404.0307.v1
• Publication Date: 2024-04-04T03:43:05Z
• Authors: Mostefa E. Kouachi; Amin Khairoun; Aymen Moghli; Souad Rahmani; Florent Mouillot; M. Jaime Baeza; Hassane Moutahir
• Keywords: Hotspot (geology); Mediterranean Basin; Fire regime

Algeria, the main fire hotspot on southern rim of Mediterranean Basin, lacks complete dataset with official perimeters, and existing one contains inconsistencies. Preprocessed global regional burned area (BA) products provide valuable insights into patterns, characteristics dynamics over time space, their impact climate change. Nevertheless, they exhibit certain limitations linked inherent spatio-temporal resolutions. To address need for reliable BA information in we systematically reconstructed, validated analyzed a 40-year (1984–2023) product (NEALGEBA; North Eastern ALGeria Burned Area) at 30-m spatial resolution typical Ecosystems this region, following international standards. We used Landsat data Mapping Tools (BAMTs) Google Earth Engine (GEE) to map BAs. The validation NEALGEBA, performed 2017 2021 using independent 10-m Sentinel-2 reference data, showed overall accuracies > 98.10 %; commission omission errors < 8.20 Dice coefficients 91.90 %, relative biases 3.44 %. temporal validation, however, MODIS VIIRS active hotspots, emphasized limitation Landsat-based reporting accuracy terms. intercomparison five readily available 2017, by same process, demonstrated outperformance NEALGEBA. Furthermore, our exhibited highest correspondence ground-based estimates. NEALGEBA currently represents most extensive series history fine NE offering significant contribution further national hazard assessments acts as contextualizing future weather extremes, such 2023 exceptional heat wave, which show not have led extreme year last four decades.