I am using the MCD64A1.006 MODIS Burned Area Monthly Global 500m dataset to look at wildfire history over a certain area. I have downloaded the images from GEE and then uploaded them into Arc desktop. Within the images which display fire events, the pixels classified as burnt vary in their values. I am confused about what these values show. In some things I have read, it seems as though these represent the day of the fire, but the images are all for the first of each month so I don't understand how another temporal aspect really fits in. If anybody has used this imagery and could explain to me what the varying pixel values mean that would be extremely helpful!
1 Answer
The values in the MCD64A1 layer are the estimated dates of mapped burns.
Burn Date:
Ordinal day of burn (1-366) for each 500-m grid cell, with 0 = unburned land, -1 = unmapped due to insufficient data, and -2 = water.
See more in the MCD64A1 User Guide.
I agree that this can be a bit confusing, when you have a monthly product, but you should remember that this data layer is intended for both ongoing monitoring and for historical analysis.