A three-year Analysis of the Biomass Burning Season in Southeast Mexico by Using a Contextual Fire Detection Algorithm

Abstract

A three-year analysis of the biomass burning season in southeast Mexico and northern Guatemala, by far the region with most burning in Central America, is presented in this study. We use a contextual algorithm implemented in our group three years ago. The algorithm is based in Justice (1996) originally developed to be used with AVHRR data, but we readapted it to work with GOES data. Even though some spatial resolution is lost when we use GOES data in comparison with AVHRR, a large increment on time resolution is gained. This permits to detect on-time and continuously monitor fires in a given area, which is quite useful for environmental and civil protection government institutions. The algorithm (called here ADFA) has been monitoring fires in the study area since 2003 during the biomass burning season (approximately from March to May). The results indicate that this year biomass burning season was the most active of the three years. On the other hand, the main of sources of burning also varied from year to year. In 2003 the main burning sources were located in north-western Guatemala, and the peak was found in April; while for 2004, the main burning sources were located in middle Chiapas (Mexico) during April that year; finally, 2005 was somewhat similar to 2003, but the main sources in Guatemala moved a little bit to the south compared to that year.