A survival guide for assessing global fire risks to natural and human systems

This paper provides an overview of the systemic pathways of fire impacts, available remote-sensing-derived fire products and modelling efforts. The authors highlight research gaps and provide recommendations on terminology and data choice. Burned area products are generally used to estimate the extent of burned land and exposed entities, but are characterised by relative high omission errors. Active fire locations constitute a sample taken at the time of satellite overpass, but can provide a proxy for fire intensity.

Caution is warranted in intensity metric selection, as these can be biased by latitude, biome and missed measurements. Both data types have been used to derive event-based products. These offer key fire behaviour metrics, such as rate of spread and fire line intensity, yet limited operability results in irregular update cycles. Estimations of population’s exposure to fires should also take into account disperse effects from smoke (e.g. concentrations 15 µg m⁻³). In parallel, ecological impacts are often associated with burn severity, while natural fire regimes and shifts thereof should be considered.