Fire is a global phenomenon influencing ecosystem functioning, carbon stocks and fluxes, and atmospheric composition, with large impacts on human health, safety and economy. The relative importance of climate, vegetation and humans as drivers of fire activity varies across spatial and temporal scales. Multiscale and interdisciplinary assessments of fire behavior are required to understand global climate-fire feedbacks, as well as regional interactions between vegetation and humans, and fire.
Fire influences the global carbon cycle among others through its carbon emissions and post-fire ecosystem carbon sequestration. In addition, black carbon (also known as pyrogenic carbon, charcoal, soot) is a crucial component in the carbon cycle, yet uncertainties remain regarding sizes, losses and fluxes between land, rivers, oceans and atmosphere.
Remote sensing provides baseline information for all stakeholders involved in monitoring of biomass burning at different scales and for understanding how ecosystems respond to fires. However, there are still large uncertainties in satellite-based active fire, burned area, and fire emissions estimates, in part due to the complexity and diversity of the ecosystems affected. Building on the environmental significance and scientific challenges described above, this session will bring together fire scientists working on biomass burning monitoring and early warning systems. The aim of this session is to improve the understanding of interactions between fire, vegetation, carbon, climate and humans. We invite contributions developing or using remote sensing datasets, in situ observations, charcoal records, laboratory experiments and modeling approaches. We welcome studies that help to improve our understanding of (1) the relative importance of climate, vegetation and humans on fire occurrence across spatial and temporal scales (2) the impacts of fire on vegetation, atmosphere and society, (3) feedbacks between fire, vegetation and climate, and (4) the role of fire in the carbon cycle, with special focus on the transfer of black carbon and other fire markers from terrestrial ecosystems to aquatic environments, and their biogeochemical fate in these environments, (5) innovative use of remote sensing technologies (LIDAR, infrared cameras, drones) for fuel characterization, fire detection and monitoring; (6) algorithms/models applicable to regional-to-global scale fire analyses exploring active fire detection and characterization (e.g., fire radiative power, area affected, combustion phase), burned area mapping, atmospheric emissions and smoke transport, (7) fire product validation and error assessment, (8) analytical tools designed to enhance situational awareness among fire practitioners and early warning systems, addressing specific needs of operational fire behavior modeling.

Invited speakers:
Emilio Chuvieco, University of Alcala
Elena Kukavskaya, Sukachev Institute of Forest, Russian Academy of Sciences