| Biomass burning is recognized as a critical component of global environmental assessment, as it strongly affects greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions, vegetation succession, land use and cover change, and soil degradation. Additionally, wildland fires also affect people’s lives and properties, particularly at the urban-wildland interface
In spite of these impacts, global patterns of fire activity are still poorly understand. Burned area is estimated around 3.5 million sq km, with high uncertainties in certain ecosystems. Moreover, data on fire return interval, fire size distribution, fire intensity are scarce and include also high uncertainties.
This paper will review the needs of fire information, following different end user communities, The most critical aspects will be identified and a review of current efforts to cope with those errors and uncertainties will be presented |