Ma et al. (2026) Atmospheric restoration is a prerequisite for sub-pixel fire mapping: A smoke-robust protocol across five fire regions

Identification

• Journal: International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-24
• Authors: Xiaofeng Ma, Mengyuan Xu, Yongze Song, Jie Liu, Liangliang Jiang
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2026.105608

Research Groups

• School of Geography and Tourism, Chongqing Normal University, China
• Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology Information, Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
• Curtin University, Perth, Australia
• USGS EarthExplorer platform

Short Summary

This study introduces a Smoke-Robust Sub-pixel Mapping (SRSPM) protocol to systematically diagnose atmospheric preprocessing efficacy prior to sub-pixel mapping. The findings demonstrate that restoring contaminated spectral signals is essential for accurate mapping when haze contamination is substantial.

Objective

• Investigate the impact of atmospheric contamination on sub-pixel fire mapping accuracy
• Develop a diagnostic protocol to quantify the dependency of sub-pixel spatial allocation on atmospheric preprocessing

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: 30 m (Landsat Level-1 multispectral images)
• Temporal Scale: Simulated and real-world scenarios across five wildfire regions in the contiguous United States

Methodology and Data

• Models used:
  • CR-NAPCT algorithm for haze removal
  • Linear Spectral Mixing Model (LSMM) for spectral unmixing
  • Pixel Swapping Algorithm (PSA), Spatial Attraction Sub-pixel Mapping (SASM), and Radial Basis Function (RBF) based sub-pixel mapping algorithms
• Data sources:
  • Landsat Level-1 multispectral images acquired from the USGS EarthExplorer platform
  • Official fire perimeter vector datasets from the Monitoring Trends in Burned Severity (MTBS) project

Main Results

• Atmospheric scattering degrades spatial allocation capabilities of SPM, leading to severe omission errors
• Restoring contaminated spectral signals is essential for accurate mapping when haze contamination is substantial
• The SRSPM protocol characterizes the performance envelope of spectral restoration under graded haze intensities

Contributions

• Empirical evidence clarifying how scattering effects disrupt spectral fidelity and induce systematic spatial allocation errors
• A rigorous quantitative diagnosis conducted across five distinct fire regions, systematically benchmarking different SPM methods
• Establishment of a smoke-robust sub-pixel mapping protocol that characterizes the performance envelope of spectral restoration under graded haze intensities

Funding

• This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41671388)
• The research was also supported by the Chongqing Key Laboratory of GIS Application (Grant No. cstc2019jcykX0001)

Citation

@article{Ma2026Atmospheric,
  author = {Ma, Xiaofeng and Xu, Mengyuan and Song, Yongze and Liu, Jie and Jiang, Liangliang},
  title = {Atmospheric restoration is a prerequisite for sub-pixel fire mapping: A smoke-robust protocol across five fire regions},
  journal = {International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jag.2026.105608},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2026.105608}
}