The baseline concept to quantify fire impact is to capture airborne thermal imagery capable of detecting fires in all biomes (secondary forest, primary forest, clearer forest, cerrado etc) and to measure smoke plumes from fires by means of remote sensing and in-situ measurements, burning in different biomes and get their various emissions factors from these measurements. In a second step relevant data will be degraded to different spatial resolutions to determine what proportion of fires are detected and what proportion of FRP is measured by different satellite data products with the overall aim to get adjustment factors and understanding of satellite product biases and future instrument resolution needs.

By means of the combined airborne and ground-based measurements one can assess whether the emissions factors are changing over the fire season as the vegetation dries - and determine if there is any relationship that can be derived between EFs and vegetation moisture content derivable from hyperspectral remote sensing.

The data will also be utilised to characterise fires into flaming and smouldering proportions using infrared remote sensing, and then measure smoke plume trace gas emissions ratios to understand relationships and how well satellite measurements of the former could inform knowledge of the latter (and thus how much of each different trace gas is released).