MOSEV: A global burn severity database from MODIS (2000-2020)

To advance in the fire discipline as well as in the study of CO₂ emissions it is of great interest to develop a global database with estimators of the degree of biomass consumed by fire, which is defined as burn severity. We present the first global burn severity database (MOSEV database), which is based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) surface reflectance and burned area (BA) products scenes since November 2000 to near real time. To build the database we combined Terra MOD09A1 and Aqua MYD09A1 surface reflectance products to obtain dense time series of the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) spectral index, and we used the MCD64A1 product to identify BA and the date of burning. Then, we calculated for each burned pixel the difference of the NBR (dNBR), and its relativized version (RdNBR), as well as the post-burn NBR which are the most commonly used burn severity spectral indices. The database also includes the pre-burn NBR used for calculations, the date of the pre- and post-burn NBR and the date of burning.