GOFER: GOES-Observed Fire Event Representation
The GOFER algorithm uses geostationary satellite observations of active fires from GOES-East and GOES-West to map the hourly progression of large wildfires (over 50,000 acres or 202 sq. km). GOES observes North and South America with a spatial resolution of 2 km at the equator and at a frequency of 10-15 minutes for the full disk view. Along with the fire perimeter, we derive the active fire lines and fire spread rates. We tested the GOFER algorithm on a set of 28 wildfires in California from 2019-2021 and produced three versions of the product: GOFER-Combined, GOFER-East, and GOFER-West. GOFER-Combined uses both GOES-East and GOES-West observations, while GOFER-East and GOFER-West use only GOES-East and only GOES-West observations, respectively. We find that GOFER performs reasonably well compared to final perimeters from California's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) and 12-hourly perimeters from the Fire Event Data Suite (FEDS), derived from 375-m active fire observations. See our ESSD paper for more details. The GOFER Product Visualization app on Earth Engine Apps provides an overview of the product, alongside other products and datasets, such as FEDS and FRAP perimeters and 30-m burn severity from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS). The product of 28 large wildfires in California from 2019-2021 is available on Zenodo.
| Code | Description |
|---|---|
largeFires_metadata.js |
dictionary of key metadata for all fires in EE |
fireData.csv |
dictionary of key metadata for all fires in R |
0a - Calc_staging.js |
set temporal and spatial constraints for each fire by manually inspecting GOES active fire pixels and timeseries |
0b - Calc_kernelRes.js |
calculate the kernel radius for smoothing based on the GOES spatial resolution |
1a - Export_FireConf.js |
export GOES fire detection confidence |
1b - Export_Parallax.js |
export GOES parallax displacement in x and y-directions |
2 - Export_ParamSens.js, eePro_ParamSens.R |
export optimization metric for confidence threshold and parallax adjustment factor |
4 - Export_FireProg.js, eePro_FireProg.R |
export fire perimeters |
5 - Export_FireProgQA.js |
quality control post-processing for fire perimeters |
6a - Export_cFireLine.js, eePro_cFireLine.R |
export concurrent active fire lines |
6b - Export_rFireLine.js, eePro_rFireLine.R |
export retrospective active fire lines |
6c - Export_FireIg.js |
export fire ignitions |
7 - Export_FireProgStats.js |
export fire spread rate, growth in fire-wide area |
8 - table_GOFERstats.R |
export GOFER summary stats for each fire |
9 - make_GOFERfinal.R |
export final GOFER data files, combined for all fires |
Earth Engine Assets
GOFER/
GOFERC_fireProg/
GOFERC_fireIg/
GOFERC_cfireLine/
GOFERC_rfireLine/
GOFERC_fireProgStats/
GOFERC_scaleVal/
...
GOESEast_MaxConf/
GOESWest_MaxConf/
GOESEast_Parallax/
GOESWest_Parallax/
Local
GOES/
fireData.csv
ee_fireProg_chunks/
ee_fireProg_temp/
ee_rfireLine/
ee_cfireLine_chunks/
ee_fireIg/
ee_fireStats/
ee_paramSens_chunks/
gofer_combined/
fireProg/
fireIg/
cfireLine/
rfireLine/
paramSens/
fireStats/
summary/
gofer_east/
...
gofer_west/
...
GOFER/
fireData.csv
GOFER-Combined/
GOFERC_fireProg.shp
GOFERC_cfireLine.shp
GOFERC_rfireLine.shp
GOFERC_fireIg.shp
GOFERC_summary.csv
GOFER-East/
...
GOFER-West/
...
https://code.earthengine.google.com/?accept_repo=users/tl2581/GOFER
| Name | Short Name | Units |
|---|---|---|
| Global variables | ||
| Fire name | fname | |
| Fire year | fyear | |
| End-of-hour variables (t=1,2,3…) | ||
| Hours after ignition, end of hour | timestep | hours |
| UTC time | tUTC | |
| Local time, with daylight savings | tLocal | |
| Local time, without daylight savings | tLocalGMT | |
| Area within fire perimeter | farea | km2 |
| Area within fire perimeter, as a percentage of the final area | fareaPer | % |
| Active fire line length (concurrent) | cflinelen | km |
| Active fire line length (retrospective) | rflinelen | km |
| Length of the perimeter | fperim | km |
| State of the fire | fstate | 0 = dormant, 1 = active |
| Half-hour variables (t=0.5,1.5,2.5…) | ||
| Hours after ignition, half hour | timestep_hh | hours |
| Growth in area | dfarea | km2 |
| Fire spread rate (MAE) | maefspread | km/h |
| Fire spread rate (AWE) | awefspread | km/h |
- For cflinelen, e.g. cflinelen5 = the portion of the perimeter that intersects with concurrent active fires with fire detection confidence > 0.05; cflinelen5 should be used as the default fire line as it incorporates most active fire pixels along the perimeter and most closely matches FEDS
- For fstate, both rfline and cfline have fstate columns, e.g. rfline_fstate; if the fire line is dormant at the timestep (fstate = 0), then that timestep is filled with the most recent cfline or the most immediate rfline after the timestep; to get the original flinelen, multiply by the corresponding fstate
Liu, T., J.T. Randerson, Y. Chen, D.C. Morton, E.B. Wiggins, P. Smyth, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, R. Nadler, and O. Nevo (2024). Systematically tracking the hourly progression of large wildfires using GOES satellite observations. Earth Sys. Sci. Data, 16, 1395-1424. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-1395-2024