CARBOAFRICA

Ilaria Palumbo reports here on the CarboAfrica project, the overarching goal for which is to set up an initial GHG flux monitoring network across Africa, in order to quantify, understand and predict, by a multi-disciplinary integrated approach, GHG emissions in Sub-Saharan Africa and their associated spatial and temporal variability.

Preparation of the field spectroradiometer to measure GHG concentrations during a controlled fire.

Fire emissions contribute a sizeable portion to the annual carbon balance in Africa, particularly to its regional and interannual deviations. In order to quantify the Sub-Saharan African fire-related carbon emissions this project will implement a new algorithm that combines remotely sensed datasets of fire occurrence with an analysis of the influencing factors, including climatic oscillations (e.g. El Nino), population density, land cover type and meteorology.

Final phase of the controlled burning of a plot.

CarboAfrica is a large consortium project. The satellite data analysed at the University of Leicester (Dep. of Geography) in particular will provide maps of the spatio-temporal distribution of fires in the African continent, covering the period 2002-2004.  Because of the significant amount of data processed the analysis will make use of the SPLINT/CERES LINUX Cluster facility. The Cluster will be used to run the model for the atmospheric correction of the satellite images and to implement the algorithm for the burned areas classification afterwards. The IDL software available on the Cluster will be used to prepare composite images of the Aerosol Optical Depth and the Top of the Atmosphere Reflectances.

More information on this Project may be found at: http://www.carboafrica.net

Staff involvement: Heiko Baltzer, Kevin Tansey, Joerg Kaduk, Sue Page