Use of remote sensing-derived variables in developing a forest fire danger forecasting system

Ehsan H Chowdhury,Quazi K Hassan

doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0564-7

Abstract

Our aim was to develop a remote sensing-based forest fire danger forecasting system (FFDFS) and its implementation in forecasting 2011 fire season in the Canadian province of Alberta. The FFDFS used Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)-derived 8-day composites of surface temperature, normalized multiband drought index, and normalized difference vegetation index as input variables. In order to eliminate the data gaps in the input variables, we propose a gap-filling technique by considering both of the spatial and temporal dimensions. These input variables were calculated during the i period and then integrated to forecast the fire danger conditions into four categories (i.e., very high, high, moderate, and low) during the i + 1 period. It was observed that 98.19 % of the fire fell under “very high” to “moderate” danger classes. The performance of this system was also demonstrated its ability to forecast the worst fires occurred in Slave Lake and Fort McMurray region during mid-May 2011. For example, 100 and 94.0 % of the fire spots fell under “very high” to “high” danger categories for Slave Lake and Fort McMurray regions, respectively.

Highlights

Forest fire is one of the natural hazards over many forested ecosystems across the world including boreal ones
We found that the amount of data gaps was approximately 11.41, 0.86, and 0.08 % in the TS, Normalized multiband drought index (NMDI), and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images, respectively, during the entire study period (Fig. 4)
The use of the 3 9 3 window size revealed that approximately 84.14 and 100 % of the data gaps were filled for TS and both NMDI and NDVI images, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Forest fire is one of the natural hazards over many forested ecosystems across the world including boreal ones. Over the boreal forested region in the Canadian province of Alberta, the annual average fire incidences were 1,541 in numbers that caused burning of approximately 220 thousand ha during the period 2002–2011 (ASRD 2012). In particular to 2011 fire season, several catastrophic fires (i.e., Slave Lake and Fort McMurray regional fires in mid-May) were observed. The Slave Lake fires were responsible for burning. Nat Hazards (2013) 67:321–334 approximately 22,000 ha of forest with an estimated economic loss of $700 million (FTCWRC 2012); on the other hand, 595,000 ha of muskeg and bush was burned within Fort McMurrary region (Treenotic 2011). Damages from such extensive fires have direct impact on human lives and livelihoods and critical to the economy. It would be worthwhile to study the fire danger conditions in order to develop appropriate fire management strategies (Vadrevu et al 2012)

Objectives

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Results

Conclusion