Chapter 14 - Application of remote sensing to study forest fires

Abstract

Forest fire is one of the most common disaster that takes place in many forest systems throughout the globe. Forest fire has a devastating impact over the environment, landscape, and ecological succession. Every year entire globe witnesses a large number of forest fires. In the foothills of the Indian Himalayan region (Shivalik), periodical spatial and severity of forest fires varies, as fires in these areas are often associated with a large concentration of pine needles on the forest floor. Thereby, forest fire assessment and mapping is very important to minimize the effect and frequency of fire events. Monitoring forest fire over large area has become cost and time effective by using remote sensing imageries (spaceborne or airborne). Remote sensing is one of the most important tools to study and detecting forest fires in cases. Global as well as periodic coverage of remote sensing data have replaced the traditional methods of fire detection to a huge extent. Remote sensing approaches help to analyze wide scenario and factors that affect forest fire. Availability of a wide range of fire detection sensors like MODIS, VIIRS, Sentinel, and so on provide us with plenty of options for mapping forest fire severity and provide mitigation. Various indices like normalized burned ratio, normalized burned thermal ratio, burned area index are most commonly used for forest fire severity mapping. The present chapter provides an overview on advancements in remote sensing techniques which can be used to map the fire incidence.