The scientific community interested in atmospheric chemistry, gas emissions from vegetation fires, and carbon cycling is currently demanding information on the extent and timing of biomass burning at the global scale. In fact, the area and type of vegetation that is burned on a monthly or annual basis are two of the parameters that provide the greatest uncertainty in the calculation of gas and aerosol emissions and burned biomass. To address this need, an inventory of burned areas at monthly time periods for the year 2000 at a resolution of 1 km²has been produced using satellite data and has been made freely available to the scientific community. In this paper, estimates of burned area and number of burn scars for four broad vegetation classes and reported at the country level for the year 2000 are presented using data taken from the inventory. Over 3.5 million km²of burned areas were detected in the year 2000, of which approximately 80% occurred in areas described as woodlands and shrublands. Approximately 17% of the burned area occurred in grasslands and croplands, the remaining 3% occurred in forests. Almost 600,000 separate burn scars were detected. Descriptions of vegetation burning activity are given for ten regions. Finally, monthly burned area estimates are presented for the Central African Republic to illustrate the usefulness of these data for understanding, monitoring and managing vegetation burning activities.

The scientific community dealing with modelling of emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols from anthropogenic sources demands reliable and quantitative information on the magnitude of biomass burning at a global scale. It is in this context that the Global Burnt Area -- 2000 (GBA2000) initiative has been launched. The specific objectives of this initiative are to produce a map of the areas burnt globally for the year 2000, using the medium resolution (1.1 km) Système Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) 4-VEGETATION (SPOT-VGT) satellite imagery and to derive statistics of area burnt per country, per month and per main type of vegetation cover. A series of regional algorithms has been developed and incorporated into a data processing system designed to yield monthly estimates of areas burnt at a global scale. The map data will then be transformed into quantitative information and made publicly available over the World Wide Web at a range of spatial and temporal resolutions to satisfy some of the requirements of the atmospheric and climate change modelling community.

A terrestrial laser scanner was used to take four scans of an area of trees, approximately 480 m² in area, within a coniferous tree stand situated in Leicestershire, UK. A number of measurements were extracted from the point cloud and compared with field measurements. Automatic stem recognition was achieved for all stems except those at the edge of the study plot. From the locations of detected stems, diameter at breast height (DBH) was measured with two least-squares shape-fitting algorithms and a circular Hough transformation method; the results were then compared with field measurements. The root mean squared error (RMSE) for DBH measurement from the laser scanner was found to be in the range 0.019–0.037 m, using three measures. Stem density (1031 stems ha⁻¹) and basal area (73 m² ha⁻¹) were also measured with reasonable accuracy. Estimation of tree volume was not as successful, in contradiction to previous research, as upper diameters and heights of trees could not be measured. This was probably a result of previous research being focused on low-density forest stands. This study presents an assessment of laser scanning capabilities in a forest environment with high (1000 stems ha⁻¹) stand density, and finds automation of the analysis to yield some important tree and stand variables to be very effective.