Abstract
Remote sensing has been proven as a useful tool in characterizing the effects of fire on a landscape scale. The radiant energy released during biomass burning can be measured remotely, and is directly related to the rate biomass consumed from the fire. This is an important measurement as it can characterize fire effects on the ground along with provide important information about the amount of gases produced by the fire. One source of error associated with estimating the fire radiative energy (FRE) remotely is the obscuration of the signal by the forest canopy. We quantify the relationship between canopy cover and the amount of energy observed by a sensor rom laboratory experiments. A prescribed fire was conducted in northwestern Florida and a suite of pre-, active, and post-fire measurements were taken by an interdisciplinary team. From those data we measured the amount of biomass consumed by the fire FRE estimates.