Emilio Chuvieco

• Ph. D. Geography
• Professor (Full) at University of Alcalá

This study features a cohesive modelling approach of human-caused wildfire ignitions applied to a set of representative regions in terms of fire activity across Europe (pilot sites, PS). Our main goal was to develop a common approach to model human-caused ignition probability at a fine-grained spatial resolution (100 m) and identify the main driver...

Monitoring methane (CH4) emissions from terrestrial ecosystems is essential for assessing the relative contributions of natural and anthropogenic factors leading to climate change and shaping global climate goals. Fires are a significant source of atmospheric CH4, with the increasing frequency of megafires amplifying their impact. Global fire emiss...

Wildfires significantly reshape the landscape of the Mediterranean basin, altering forest composition, structure, and diversity. Consequently, detailed fuel mapping is crucial for improving fire risk assessment and enhancing fire behavior modeling, as wildfires typically ignite from surface fuels and may spread vertically to canopy fuels due to can...

Background Wildfires play a significant and complex role in ecosystems, influencing various aspects of their functioning and structure. These natural disturbances can positively and negatively impact ecosystems, shaping landscapes, nutrient cycles, biodiversity, and ecological processes. This study focuses on assessing and integrating the different...

Este trabajo presenta una estimación de la distribución espacial de la huella de carbono (HC) personal de la población española por áreas Nielsen, a partir de un cuestionario sobre hábitos de consumo y transporte. Los resultados muestran diferencias notables entre regiones, siendo además estadísticamente significativas para la HC del consumo de Ene...

Understanding the spatial and temporal trends of burned areas (BA) on a global scale offers a comprehensive view of the underlying mechanisms driving fire incidence and its influence on ecosystems and vegetation recovery patterns over extended periods. Such insights are invaluable for modeling fire emissions and the formulation of strategies for po...

Climate change contributes to the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, with significant impacts on society and the environment. However, our understanding of the global distribution of extreme fires remains skewed, primarily influenced by media coverage and regionalised research efforts. This inaugural State of Wildfires report...

Better understanding how fires respond to climate variability is an issue of current interest in light of ongoing climate change. However, evaluating the global‐scale temporal variability of fires in response to climate presents a challenge due to the intricate processes at play and the limitation of fire data. Here, we investigate the links betwee...

Various fire emission estimates for southern Africa during 2019, derived with multiple burned area data sets with resolutions ranging from 500 to 20 m, are evaluated using satellite carbon monoxide (CO) observations. Southern African emissions derived from burned area generated by 20 m Sentinel‐2 satellite imagery are up to 120% higher than other e...

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires globally, with significant impacts on society and the environment. However, our understanding of the global distribution of extreme fires remains skewed, primarily influenced by media coverage and regional research concentration. This inaugural State of Wildfires report systemati...

We assembled the first gridded burned area (BA) database of national wildfire data (ONFIRE), a comprehensive and integrated resource for researchers, non-government organisations, and government agencies analysing wildfires in various regions of the Earth. We extracted and harmonised records from different regions and sources using open and reprodu...

Globe-LFMC 2.0, an updated version of Globe-LFMC, is a comprehensive dataset of over 280,000 Live Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC) measurements. These measurements were gathered through field campaigns conducted in 15 countries spanning 47 years. In contrast to its prior version, Globe-LFMC 2.0 incorporates over 120,000 additional data entries, introdu...

Background Fire is a natural disturbance that significantly impacts ecosystems and plays a crucial role in the distribution and preservation of biota worldwide. The effects of fires on bird diversity can be both positive, as they can create new habitats, and negative, as they can reduce nesting success. To fully understand the ecological implicatio...

The increasing availability of remote sensing imagery led to the emergence of numerous burned area mapping products and methodologies, thus, the necessity of spatial and temporally validating them. The main objective of this paper is to conduct a global analysis and comparison of MODIS and VIIRS active fire dates with dating provided by moderate re...

We assembled the first gridded burned area (BA) database of national wildfire data (ONFIRE), a comprehensive and integrated resource for researchers, non-government organisations, and government agencies analysing wildfires in various regions of the Earth. We extracted and harmonised records from different regions and sources using open and reprodu...

This paper aims to map vegetation fuel types using a combination of remote sensing data in a complex and diverse plant cover of central Portugal. This study employs Sentinel-1 (S1) and Sentinel-2 (S2) bands, digital elevation model (DEM), and vegetation indices (VIs). Gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture features were generated for the fi...

This paper presents a review of concepts related to wildfire risk assessment, including the determination of fire ignition and propagation (fire danger), the extent to which fire may spatially overlap with valued assets (exposure), and the potential losses and resilience to those losses (vulnerability). This is followed by a brief discussion of how...

Accurate and spatially explicit information on forest fuels becomes essential to designing an integrated fire risk management strategy, as fuel characteristics are critical for fire danger estimation, fire propagation, and emissions modelling, among other aspects. This paper proposes a new European fuel classification system that can be used for di...

Extreme wildfires are becoming more common and increasingly affecting Earth’s climate. Wildfires in boreal forests have attracted much less attention than those in tropical forests, although boreal forests are one of the most extensive biomes on Earth and are experiencing the fastest warming. We used a satellite-based atmospheric inversion system t...

After more than two decades of successful provision of global burned area data the MODIS mission is near to its end. Therefore, using alternative images to generate moderate resolution burned area maps becomes critical to guarantee temporal continuity of these products. This paper presents the development of a hybrid algorithm based on Copernicus S...

Space-based Earth observation (EO), in the form of long-term climate data records, has been crucial in the monitoring and quantification of slow changes in the climate system—from accumulating greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, increasing surface temperatures, and melting sea-ice, glaciers and ice sheets, to rising sea-level. In addition to...

Understanding the sources of error that affect the accuracy of current coarse burned area products is crucial to identifying weaknesses and limitations of burned area (BA) algorithms. In this paper, we propose methods to analyse sources of errors of global BA products, which are applied to assess a widely used product, (FireCCI51), created under th...

High omission rates of global coarse-resolution burned area (BA) products entail significant underestimation of actual fire impacts, especially in tropical regions. Fire impacts on deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) were analysed for 2016 and 2019 based on sentinel-2 satellite data (20 m). We found that fires are a precursor of forest loss,...

Fire is a natural phenomenon that has played a critical role in transforming the environment and maintaining biodiversity at a global scale. However, the plants in some habitats have not developed strategies for recovery from fire or have not adapted to the changes taking place in their fire regimes. Maps showing ecological vulnerability to fires c...

Accurate reference data to validate burned area (BA) products are crucial to obtaining reliable accuracy metrics for such products. However, the accuracy of reference data can be affected by numerous factors; hence, we can expect some degree of deviation with respect to real ground conditions. Since reference data are usually produced by semi-autom...

The availability of high-resolution reference datasets representing in space and time and with high accuracy areas affected by fires is strategic for the validation of remotely-sensed Burned Area (BA) products. This paper proposes a methodology designed to build a burned area reference dataset from Sentinel-2 (S2) images at continental scale by imp...

Accurate and spatially explicit information on forest fuels becomes essential to designing an integrated fire risk management strategy, as fuel characteristics are critical for fire danger estimation, fire propagation and emissions modelling, among other aspects. This paper presents the conceptual development of a new fuel classification system tha...

Coarse resolution sensors are not very sensitive at detecting small fire patches, making current estimations of global burned areas (BA) very conservative. Using medium or high-resolution sensors to generate BA products becomes then a priority, particularly in areas where fires tend to be small and frequent. Building on previous work that developed...

Wildfires can either mediate or endanger forest ecosystem services and ecological processes. If left uncontrolled, wildfires can cause severe damage and negative cascading effects. For example, atmospheric pollution, health issues, soil erosion, landslides, biotic damages, and ecosystem degradation. The undergoing climate changes across Europe and...

We identified four global fire regimes based on a k-means algorithm using five variables covering the spatial, temporal and magnitude dimensions of fires, derived from 19-year long satellite burned area and active fire products. Additionally, we assessed the relation of fire regimes to forest fuels distribution. The most extensive fire regime (35%...

First of all, we would like to thank the authors of the comment [...]

In recent years, the growing availability of global satellite-derived burned area (BA) products has led to the development of methods and protocols to rigorously estimate their accuracy metrics. These protocols are based on design-based inference and provide unbiased estimators of various dimensions of accuracy. Current procedures consider the spat...

O período entre 2018 e 2022 mostrou-nos que o problema dos incêndios à escala global não está a diminuir, antes pelo contrário. Parece que as consequências das alterações climáticas já estão a afectar a ocorrência de incêndios florestais em várias partes do Mundo, de uma forma que só esperaríamos que acontecesse vários anos mais tarde. Em muitos pa...

O período entre 2018 e 2022 mostrou-nos que o problema dos incêndios à escala global não está a diminuir, antes pelo contrário. Parece que as consequências das alterações climáticas já estão a afectar a ocorrência de incêndios florestais em várias partes do Mundo, de uma forma que só esperaríamos que acontecesse vários anos mais tarde. Em muitos pa...

Comprender mejor los factores personales que influyen en la adopción de estilos de vida sostenibles- ligados a una menor Huella de Carbono (HC)- es clave en el diseño de políticas de mitigación del Cambio Climático. Este estudio muestra los resultados preliminares de una encuesta representativa de la población española, que indaga en qué medida las...

This paper presents the generation of a global long-term Burned Area (BA) product based on Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images. The BA product was derived from the Land Long Term Data Record (LTDR), which provides a continuous dataset of geometrically and radiometrically corrected AVHRR images at 0.05° resolution (≈5 km). The BA...

This article presents the burned area (BA) product of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) of the European Commission. This product, named C3SBA10, is based on the adaptation to Sentinel-3 OLCI images of a BA algorithm developed within the Fire Climate Change Initiative (FireCCI) project, which used MODIS data. We first reviewed the adaptati...

A preliminary version of a global automatic burned-area (BA) algorithm at medium spatial resolution was developed in Google Earth Engine (GEE), based on Landsat or Sentinel-2 reflectance images. The algorithm involves two main steps: initial burned candidates are identified by analyzing spectral changes around MODIS hotspots, and those candidates a...

We present an analysis of the spatio-temporal trends derived from long-term burned area (BA) data series. Two global BA products were included in our analysis, the FireCCI51 (2001–2019) and the FireCCILT11 (1982–2018) datasets. The former was generated from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250 m reflectance data, guided by 1 km...

Fire is a natural phenomenon that has played a critical role in transforming the environment and maintaining biodiversity at a global scale. However, the plants in some habitats have not developed strategies for recovery from fire or have not adapted to the changes taking place in their fire regimes. Maps showing ecological vulnerability to fires c...

Satellites have detected a global decline in burned area of grassland, coincident with a small increase in burned forest area. These contrasting trends have been reported in earlier literature; however, less is known of their impacts on global fire emission trends due to the scarcity of direct observations. We use an atmospheric inversion system to...

Fuel mapping is key to fire propagation risk assessment and regeneration potential. Previous studies have mapped fuel types using remote sensing data, mainly at local-regional scales, while at smaller scales fuel mapping has been based on general-purpose global databases. This work aims to develop a methodology for producing fuel maps across Europe...

The current understanding of determinants of climate action and mitigation behaviour is largely based on measures of climate change including concerns, attitudes and beliefs. However, few studies have shown the actual effects of external and internal drivers on citizens’ lifestyles related to climate change, particularly in terms of their carbon fo...

In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of the use of convolutional neural networks (CNN), a deep learning method widely applied in remote sensing-based studies in recent years, for burned area (BA) mapping combining radar and optical datasets acquired by Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 on-board sensors, respectively. Combining active and passive...

Significance Fires burn an area comparable to Europe each year, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols. We compared burned area (BA) based on 20-m resolution images with a BA derived from 500-m data. It represents an 80% increase in BA in sub-Saharan Africa, responsible for about 70% of global BA. This difference is predominately (87%) attributed t...

Biomass burning is one of the most critical factors impacting vegetation and atmospheric trends, with important societal implications, particularly when extreme weather conditions occur. Trends and factors of burned area (BA) have been analysed at regional and global scales, but little effort has been dedicated to study the interannual variability....

Four burned area tools were implemented in Google Earth Engine (GEE), to obtain regular processes related to burned area (BA) mapping, using medium spatial resolution sensors (Landsat and Sentinel-2). The four tools are (i) the BA Cartography tool for supervised burned area over the user-selected extent and period, (ii) two tools implementing a BA...

This paper presents a new global, operational burned area (BA) product at 300 m, called C3SBA10, generated 10 from Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) near-infrared (NIR) reflectance and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) thermal anomaly data. This product was generated within the Copernicus Climate Change Service...

Over the past 2 decades, several global burned area products have been produced and released to the public. However, the accuracy assessment of such products largely depends on the availability of reliable reference data that currently do not exist on a global scale or whose production require a high level of dedication of project resources. The im...

Biomass burning is one of the critical components of the Earth system, significantly affecting atmospheric emissions and carbon budgets. Fires occurring in the interface between wildland and urban areas also have important socioeconomic effects, affecting people’s lives and resources. Even though fires are natural in many ecosystems, climate and so...

Climate Data Records (CDRs) of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) derived from satellite instruments help to characterize the main components of the Earth system, to identify the state and evolution of its processes, and to constrain the budgets of key cycles of water, carbon and energy. The...

Background: Due to the current environmental crisis, sustainable consumption (SC) behaviour and its drivers has gained significant attention among researchers. One of the potential drivers of SC, religion, have been analysed in the last few years. The study of the relationship between religion and adoption of SC at the individual level have reached...

With less than a decade left to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this communication aims to improve understanding of the enabling environment that is essential for Earth observations (EO) to be fully adopted within the institutional settings that drive the implementation of the SDGs and the Global Indicator Framework, an effective r...

This paper presents a carbon footprint (CF) observatory recently developed within our research group. It aims to introduce a new concept of CF accountability, which focused not just on measuring CF, but also on making users reflect about and eventually change their lifestyles to reduce their personal emissions. With this conception, the CO2web obse...

Comprehensive fire surveillance will strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change. Comprehensive fire surveillance will strengthen resilience and adaptation to climate change.

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [1], which includes an error in the following formula (Section 2.5 of the paper) relate. It currently indicates: LBI = z(T5) - z(T5_diff) - z(Red) - z(Red_diff) - z(NIR) - z(NIR_diff) - z(GEMI) - z(BAI) - z(BAIt+1) The correct formula of the LBI is: LBI = z(T5) - z(T5_diff) - z(Red) +...

Climate Data Records (CDRs) of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) as defined by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) derived from satellite instruments help to characterize the main components of the Earth system, to identify the state and evolution of its processes, and to constrain the budgets of key cycles of water, carbon and energy. The...

Purpose This paper reviews the most recent literature related to the use of remote sensing (RS) data in wildland fire management. Recent Findings Studies dealing with pre-fire assessment, active fire detection, and fire effect monitoring are reviewed in this paper. The analysis follows the different fire management categories: fire prevention, det...

Abstract. Over the past two decades, several global burned area products have been produced and released to the public. However, the accuracy assessment of such products largely depends on the availability of reliable reference data that currently does not exist on a global scale or whose production requires high level dedication of project resourc...

This study provides a comparative analysis of two Sentinel-1 and one Sentinel-2 burned area (BA) detection and mapping algorithms over 10 test sites (100 × 100 km) in tropical and sub-tropical Africa. Depending on the site, the burned area was mapped at different time points during the 2015–2016 fire seasons. The algorithms relied on diverse burned...

Tropical forests are known for hosting about half of the global biodiversity, and therefore are considered to be a fundamental part of the Earth System. However, in the last decades, the anthropogenic pressure over these areas has been continuously increasing, mostly linked to agricultural expansion. This has created great international concern, wh...

This paper presents the generation of a global burned area mapping algorithm using MODIS hotspots and near-infrared reflectance within ESA's Fire_cci project. The algorithm is based on a hybrid approach that combines MODIS highest resolution (250 m) near-infrared band and active fire information from thermal channels. The burned area is detected in...

Los materiales que aquí se presentan forman parte de un curso de introducción a la contemplación de la naturaleza que realizamos el junio de 2019 en el puerto de Navacerrada, al norte de la Comunidad de Madrid, en el marco de las actividades de la cátedra de ética ambiental de la Universidad de Alcalá. El curso pretendía proponer una modesta introd...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Burned area algorithms from radar images are often based on temporal differences between pre- and post-fire backscatter values. However, such differences may occur long past the fire event, an effect known as temporal decorrelation. Improvements in radar-based burned areas monitoring depend on a better understanding of the temporal decorrelation ef...

Fire has a vast influence on the climatic balance, and the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) considers it an Essential Climate Variable (ECV). Remote sensing data is a powerful source of information for burned area detection and thus for estimating greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from fires. Currently, most burned area products are based on...

This paper presents the first global burned area (BA) product derived from the land long term data record (LTDR), a long-term 0.05-degree resolution dataset generated from advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) images. Daily images were combined in monthly composites using the maximum temperature criterion to enhance the burned signal and...

Globe-LFMC is an extensive global database of live fuel moisture content (LFMC) measured from 1,383 sampling sites in 11 countries: Argentina, Australia, China, France, Italy, Senegal, Spain, South Africa, Tunisia, United Kingdom and the United States of America. The database contains 161,717 individual records based on in situ destructive samples...

This paper presents a burned area mapping algorithm based on change detection of Sentinel-1 backscatter data guided by thermal anomalies. The algorithm self-adapts to the local scattering conditions and it is robust to variations of input data availability. The algorithm applies the Reed-Xiaoli detector (RXD) to distinguish anomalous changes of the...