Assessment of VIIRS 375 m active fire using tropical peatland combustion algorithm applied to Landsat-8 over Indonesia’s peatlands

VIIRS 375 m active fire data (VNP14IMG), the highest spatial resolution available cost-free fire product, were assessed for representing fire in typical degraded tropical peatlands in Indonesia. The results of applying the Tropical Peatland Combustion Algorithm to Landsat-8 (ToPeCAl-L8) daytime imagery were utilised as the fire references. To permit the comparison of non-simultaneous VNP14IMG and ToPeCAl-L8, peatland fire propagation speeds resulting from previous study using TET-1 data in Central Kalimantan’s peatlands were utilised. Most peatland fires were still within 750 m from their source over 15 h under uniform conditions, except for very large fires. The detection rates of nighttime VNP14IMG compared with ToPeCAl-L8 showed about 80% agreement for small fire areas (< 14 ha). For fires larger than 14 ha, a dissolved 375 m buffer (cluster buffer) of VNP14IMG active fires with an integration of nighttime and daytime acquisitions, produced a probability of detection up to 90%. These results generated a recommendation for implementing cluster buffer analysis and integration of nighttime and daytime analysis of VNP14IMG data for better accuracy in fire detection for ground fire management. They also demonstrate the utility of the ToPeCAl-L8 algorithm with VIIRS 375 m active fire data.