Improved Biomass and Burning Efficiency Factors for Forest Fire Emissions Estimation in Central Chile

Abstract

Abstract. In an era of increasing wildfires frequency and intensity an accurate estimation of the emissions released to the atmosphere is essential to reduce their impacts. In this study, we improve the accuracy of our estimations by introducing field measurements of biomass and adapting the burning efficiency factors to different levels of burn severity computed from Sentinel-2 data. The biomass measured in the field complemented the data found in the literature. The emissions derived were compared with the emissions from the GFED product showing a good agreement, although GFED values were higher than ours, suggesting that GFED may overestimate the emissions due to their coarse resolution and the generalized factors applied to large ecosystems.