Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to present a new method for early detection of forest fires, especially in forest zones prone to fires using microwave remote sensing and information-modeling tools. A decision-making system is developed as a tool for operational coupled analysis of modeling results and remote sensing data. The main operating structure of this system has blocks that calculate the moisture of forest canopy, the soil-litter layer, and the forest physical temperature using the observed brightness temperature provided by the flying platform IL-18 equipped with passive microwave radiometers of 1.43, 13.3 and 37.5 GHz frequencies. The hydrological parameters of the forest are assessed with both a developed regional hydrological model and remote sensing observations. The hydrological model allows for the detection of fire-prone zones that are subject to remote sensing when modeling results are corrected and thermal temperatures are evaluated. An approach for the real time forest fires classification via daytime remote sensing observations is proposed. The relative theoretical and experimental results presented here have allowed us to use a new approach to forests monitoring during periods of potential fire. A decision-making algorithm is presented that aims at analyzing data flows from radiometers located on the remote sensing platform to calculate the probability of forest fire occurring in geographical pixels. As case study, the state of forest fires that occurred in Siberia in 2019 using microwave remote sensing measurements conducted by a flying IL-18 laboratory is presented. This remote sensing platform is equipped with optical and microwave tools that allow the optical and microwave images of the observed forest areas. The main operating frequencies of microwave radiometers are 1.43, 13.3 and 37.5 GHz. Microwave radiometers provide data on water content in the forest canopy and on litter and physical temperatures. Based on the long-term measurements made in Siberia, the possible improvement of the proposed decision-making system for future relevant studies is discussed in detail. The basic idea of cost-effective monitoring of forested areas consists of a two-stage exploration of fire risk zones. The first monitoring stage is performed using the hydrological model of the study area to identify low moisture areas of the forest canopy and litter. The second stage of monitoring is conducted using the remote sensing platform only in the local fire-dangerous areas in order to more precisely identify the areas prone to fire and to detect and diagnose real burning zones. The developed algorithm allows the calculation of physical temperatures and the detection of temperature anomalies based on measured brightness temperatures. Finally, the spatial distribution of the probability of forest fire occurrence is given as an example of the decision-making system along with a comparison of this distribution with the satellite images provided by the EOSDIS Land data.
Highlights
Various aspects of forest fire problems have been examined by many authors [1,2,3]
This paper proposes the structure of a forest fire risk monitoring system, taking into account all factors and estimates of soil moisture content as the main index of fire risk using microwave remote sensing measurements
The study was conducted in Siberia over the period 1985–2019, using decision-making system (DMS) along with the IL-18 remote sensing platform and satellite data [62,63]
Summary
Various aspects of forest fire problems have been examined by many authors [1,2,3]. Forest fires cause significant loss of lives and hundreds of homes, which require significant financial investments to address their impacts. Existing monitoring systems usually observe forest fire when it has already spread to a forest area, damaging the ecosystem and contributing to environmental changes, such as the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere [4,5,6]. As Jaforzadeh et al [7] emphasized the role of forest ecosystems in maintaining environmental balance is the most important factor in global sustainable development. There are several solutions to these problems on a regional scale [1,8,9,10] In these cases, environmental and socio-economic factors should be taken into account considering their regional level, including precipitation, forest type, topography, population density, distance between forest and urban areas, socio-economic development level and other anthropogenic variables. The main goal of these investigations should be to evaluate the probability of a specific forest fire starting [11,12,13]
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