June 2025
Sense4Fire at ESA's Living Planet Symposium
ESA’s Living Planet Symposia are among the world’s premier events on Earth observation. In 2025, it takes place in Vienna, Austria, from 23-27 June. The Sense4Fire team has two presentations at LPS:
Matthias Forkel et al.: Novel Earth observation data-model fusion approaches reveal dominant role of woody debris in fire emissions in the Amazon and Cerrado (Tuesday 24.06.2025, 14:00, Session A.03.04 Model-data interfaces and the carbon cycle, Room 1.34)
Daniel Kinalczyk and Matthias Forkel: Quantifying the effect of bush encroachment on fuels and fire emissions in southern Africa with a satellite-based data-model fusion approach (Wednesday 25.06.2025, 17:45, Poster A.02.08 Impacts of fire in the Earth system, Room X5, Zone L-M)
June 2025
Sense4Fire Continues – New Fire Emission Products Coming in Late 2025 and 2026
On June 19, 2025, TU Dresden signed a new contract with the European Space Agency to extend the successful **Sense4Fire** project. The collaboration with the established consortium — **TU Dresden**, **KNMI**, and **BeZero Carbon** — will continue throughout 2025 and 2026, focusing on the development of innovative fire emission products.
Upcoming Products (Late 2025–2026)
Reprocessing of Fire Emission Products for Africa
GFA-S4F v0.3: Reprocessed fire emissions for Africa (2019–2025), based on VIIRS active fire observations and fire type classification from the *Global Fire Atlas* approach. The methodology incorporates improved conversion factors to estimate fuel consumption from fire radiative energy.
TUD-S4F v0.3: Reprocessed fire emissions for Africa (2016–2024), using the TUD-S4F data–model fusion approach. This version integrates updated, high-resolution land cover data from ESA WorldCover.
Development, Validation, and Assessment of Near-Real-Time Fire Emission Products for Africa
TUD-S4F-vNRT02: The TUD-S4F near-real-time setup will be revised and undergo systematic testing. Near-real-time (NRT) fire emission estimates for Africa will be available starting in autumn 2025.
KNMI-S5p: As before, all fire emission estimates will be validated against satellite observations of atmospheric CO and NOx from **Sentinel-5P*.
High-Resolution Fire Emission Estimates
TUD-S4F-vHR01: The TUD-S4F approach will be adapted to high spatial resolution (20 m) to estimate fuel loads and fire emissions in selected African study regions (2016–2025). This will utilize land cover from ESA WorldCover, as well as leaf area index and burned area data derived from Sentinel-2.
January 2025
Publication in Nature Geoscience
The Sense4Fire team published together with further collaborators a paper in Nature Geoscience:
In the paper, an intercomparison of several fire emission estimates in presented for the fire season 2020 in the Amazon and Cerrado. Then the contribution of different fire types and fuel components to the total fire emissions are investigated, showing that emissions are dominated by smouldering combustion of woody debris.
ESA also published an article about the paper along with a very nice animation of the key results.
All datasets related to the paper are open available at https://doi.org/10.25532/OPARA-688 and at this website under "Data".
November 2024
Demonstration of the near-real time database
The Sense4Fire project provided near-real time estimates of fire emissions for the Amazon/Cerrado for the year 2024. Thereby we provided three updates at the end of July, end of August and end of September 2024. This demonstrates the near-real time capabilities of the GFA-S4F and TUD-S4F approaches. The near-real time results of the fire emissions in 2024 have been presented and discussed with the scientific community at various scientific events:
- Fire Modelling Development Brainstorming Workshop; Leverhulme Centre for Wildfire, Science and Society; 16-18 September 2024, Dartington Hall, UK
- 13th EARSeL Forest Fires Special Interest Group Workshop; 19-20 September 2024, Milano, Italy
- Future Focus Wildfires. Community forum on Earth Observation for wildfires monitoring; EUMETSAT; 26-28 November 2024, Darmstadt, Germany | [Presentation PDF]
October 2024
Fire season in the Amazon 2024: Near-real time database online
The Amazon experienced an exceptional fire season in 2024. The Sense4Fire project provided near-real time estimates of fire emissions during this season with the GFA-S4F and TUD-S4F approaches. Forest fires caused especially higher than normal emissions in Bolivia. Estimated emissions of carbon monoixde (CO) are between 56 (GFA-S4F) and 62 Tg (TUD-S4F) for the period August adn September 2024.
April 2024
EGU General Assembly 2024
The Sense4Fire project partners attended and presented at EGU General Assembly 2024 at the Vienna International Conference Center, Austria from the 14th-19th April
Matthias Forkel (TUD) Multiple approaches for quantifying fuels, combustion dynamics, and regional fire emissions in the Amazon and Cerrado | [PDF]
Niels Andela (BeZero) New insights on global fire extremes from object-based fire inventories | [PDF]
Dave Van Wees (BeZero) Comparison and validation of state-of-the-art fire emissions models for the Amazon | [PDF]
May 2024
Sense4Fires Experimental Database V0.2 online
We release the second version of the Sense4Fire fire emissions estimates in the second version of the experimental database. The database contains dataset of fuel and fire properties and fire emissions for the study regions Amazon/Cerrado, southern Africa, eastern Siberia and southern Europe.
July 2023
Sense4Fires Experimental Database V0.1 online
We are very pleased to announce that the first results of the Sense4Fire project are available in an experimental database. The database contains outputs of the respective project partners and their developed methods for the study regions Amazon, southern Africa, and Siberia.
The GFA-S4F approach provides fuel consumption and fire emissions derived from a fire type classification and Sentinel-3 and VIIRS FRP observations
The TUD-S4F approach provides fuel loads, fuel consumption and fire emissions derived by integrating various Earth observation products in a data-model fusion approach
The KNMI-S5p approach provides CO and NOx fire emissions derived from Sentinel-5p
Update: Version 0.1 of the database has been replaced with version 0.2:
April 2023
EGU General Assembly 2023
The Sense4Fire project partners attended and presented at EGU General Assembly 2023 at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany from the 23rd-28th April
Matthias Forkel (TUD) Effects of land use, fuel loads and fuel moisture on fire intensity and fire emissions in South America derived by reconciling bottom-up and top-down satellite observations | [PDF]
Christine Wessollek (TUD) Estimating biomass compartments and surface fuel loads by integrating various satellite products with a data-model fusion approach | [PDF]
May 2022
Living Planet Symposium 2022
The Sense4Fire project partners attended and presented at the Living Planet Symposium at the World Conference Center in Bonn, Germany from the 23rd-27th May
Jos de Laat (KNMI) On the use of daily Sentinel-5p trace gas and aerosol observations for characterising small-scale localised wildfires
Vincent Huijnen (KNMI) Using Sentinel-5p trace gas and aerosol observations of fire plumes to constrain a global composition model: a critical assessment