Use of Remote Sensing in Developing a Forest Fire Occurrence Management System

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In Canada, forest fire is a critical disturbance. In the last 25 years, there have been on average 8300 fires annually. Each year on average 2.3 million hectares of forest have been burned. Though fire brings some advantages in enriching soil nutrients, killing insects and diseases, regenerating forests; however, it causes a significant amount of detrimental impacts. Those include: (i) economic loss due to burning of the trees and properties nearby the fire locations; (ii) increasing the carbon dioxide loading in the atmosphere; (iii) health hazard through air quality deterioration; and (iv) possible loss of human life in fighting large fires, among others. Also, every year on average Canada has spent CAD $500 million to $1 billion in fighting fires during the last decade. Thus, development of an efficient forest fire occurrence management system is crucial to develop sustainable fire management strategies in order to offset the adverse impacts. In this context, the intent is to use remote sensing data (in the form of digital imagery) acquired by the satellite platforms capable of gathering information over a large geographic area periodically. The overall goal of this proposed research program is to develop a forest fire occurrence management system. The foremost elements of the proposed research are the employment of remote sensing data to: (i) enhance the recently developed remote sensing-based forest fire danger forecasting system; (ii) determine land surface phenological stages at an enhanced temporal resolution (i.e., 2-day), and their relationships with fire occurrences; (iii) model fire occurrences by combining the outcomes of the first two elements; and (iv) develop fuel management strategies to reduce fire severity in the event of fire occurrences by using the outcomes of the first element and remote sensing-derived leaf area index data. The successful execution of this proposed research program will result in a prototype forest fire occurrence management system. It will be very useful in forest fire management; in sustainability and economics of forest resources; and in guiding research and codes in handling fire instances, among others. In addition, as a by-product of the proposed research program, the intent is to develop a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image processing software package based on an open source platform; which will be made publicly available. Such action will proliferate the use of remote sensing data in natural resource and natural hazard/disaster management activities in Canada and elsewhere in the world.