Size Of Burned Area Research Articles

Forest waste composting-operational management, environmental impacts, and application.

In Portugal, the number of fires and the size of burnt areas are rising dramatically every year, increasing with improper management of agroforestry wastes (AFRs). This work aims to study the composting of these wastes with minimal operational costs and understand the environmental impact and the compost application on burnt soil. Thus, a study of life cycle assessment (LCA) was carried out based on windrow composting processes, considering the avoided environmental impacts associated with the end-product quality and its application as an organic amendment. Three composting piles were made with AFRs from the Residual Biomass Collection Centre (RBCC) in Bodiosa (Portugal). Sewage sludges (SS) from an urban wastewater treatment plant were used as conditioning agent. One pile with AFRs (MC) and another with AFRs and SS (MCS) were managed according to good composting practices. Another pile with the AFRs was developed without management (NMC), thus with a minimal operational cost. Periodically, it was measured several physical and chemical parameters according to standard methodologies. Eleven environmental impacts of compost production, MC and MCS, were analyzed by a LCA tool, and their effect on the growth of Pinus pinea was evaluated, using peat as reference. Composting evolution was expected for both piles. Final composts, MC and MCS, were similar, complying with organic amendment quality parameters. Compost NMC, with no operational management, showed the highest germination index. Piles MC and MCS showed similar environmental impacts, contributing to a negative impact on global warming, acidification, and eutrophication. Greater growth was obtained with application of MCS, followed by MC, and finally, peat. Composting is a sustainable way to valorize AFRs wastes, producing compost that could restore burnt soils and promote plant growth and circular economy.

Weather Modification Technology as an Engineering Solution for Reducing Peat Fire Disasters

The objectives of this research are to investigate the effectiveness of an application of weather modification technology (WMT) in reducing peat fire disasters; and to generate trends and correlations between the implementation of WMT with 3 variables, improvement of precipitation rates, reduction of hotspot cases, and reducing the size of burnt areas. A cloud seeding method was applied in the WMT processes by spraying ultra-giant nucleic (10-50 microns) of NaCl throughout airplanes within the Pelalawan Regency, Indonesia, 2020. The target-only method was applied for evaluating an increase in the precipitation rates during the TMC period of 2017-2020. Three satellites (TRMM, Landsat, and MODIS) data and geographical information system (GIS) were applied in the calculation of precipitation rates, hotspots, and peat fire (burnt) areas. The results showed that during 4 years of the observation period, the implementation of WMT in this research location was considered effective in improving the precipitation rates as PCH = 1.33 >1. There was also a trend that the higher the precipitation rates were, the lower the size of burnt areas would be (R² > 80%). This article is expected to be a reference for further research and development in peat fire mitigation and control.

On the merits of sparse surrogates for global sensitivity analysis of multi-scale nonlinear problems: Application to turbulence and fire-spotting model in wildland fire simulators

Many nonlinear phenomena, whose numerical simulation is not straightforward, depend on a set of parameters in a way which is not easy to predict beforehand. Wildland fires in presence of strong winds fall into this category, also due to the occurrence of firespotting. We present a global sensitivity analysis of a new sub-model for turbulence and fire-spotting included in a wildfire spread model based on a stochastic representation of the fireline. To limit the number of model evaluations, fast surrogate models based on generalized Polynomial Chaos (gPC) and Gaussian Process are used to identify the key parameters affecting topology and size of burnt area. This study investigates the application of these surrogates to compute Sobol’ sensitivity indices in an idealized test case. The performances of the surrogates for varying size and type of training sets as well as for varying parameterization and choice of algorithms have been compared. In particular, different types of truncation and projection strategies are tested for gPC surrogates. The best performance was achieved using a gPC strategy based on a sparse least-angle regression (LAR) and a low-discrepancy Halton’s sequence. Still, the LAR-based gPC surrogate tends to filter out the information coming from parameters with large length-scale, which is not the case of the cleaning-based gPC surrogate. The wind is known to drive the fire propagation. The results show that it is a more general leading factor that governs the generation of secondary fires. Using a sparse surrogate is thus a promising strategy to analyze new models and its dependency on input parameters in wildfire applications.

Влияние доступности территории и характеристик рельефа на расположение и размер гарей в темнохвойных лесах Печоро-Илычского заповедника

Fires – one of the most important factors in catastrophic transformation of natural forest cover. Destroying whole ecosystems, fires, at the same time, start long-term succession processes. The study of the causes of fires makes a significant contribution to understanding structural and functional organization and dynamics of modern forests. The article examines the impact of availability of the territory and landscape-topographical features on the distribution and size of burnt areas formed in the last 150 years, in the foothill area of Pechora-Ilych Nature Reserve. The peculiarity of the territory is a complete lack of roads; the only roads are the rivers: Pechora, Ilych and their major tributaries. Analysis of the location of burned areas showed that significant influence on the occurrence of fire is provided by proximity of navigable rivers, since the greatest number of fires during studied period occurred at a distance of up to 3 km from navigable rivers, along which local population actively explores the territory (building of hunting shacks, gathering pine nuts, selective logging, etc.). Size of the fire is connected with proximity to navigable rivers: the largest fires is confined to the river banks and are likely to be only of anthropogenic origin. Small fires occurred at different distances from navigable rivers, could be both natural and anthropogenic ones. Settlements that existed before the formation of reserve had substantial and statistically significant effect on the occurrence of fire. Statistically significant associations of burnt areas with absolute altitude (the vast majority of burned areas are located on surfaces below 400 m) indirectly confirms that fires occurred at intensively developed parts of forests along the rivers.

Automated mapping of burned areas in semi-arid ecosystems using modis time-series imagery

Abstract. Understanding spatial and temporal patterns of burned areas at regional scales, provides a long-term perspective of fire processes and its effects on ecosystems and vegetation recovery patterns, and it is a key factor to design prevention and post-fire restoration plans and strategies. Standard satellite burned area and active fire products derived from the 500-m MODIS and SPOT are avail - able to this end. However, prior research caution on the use of these global-scale products for regional and sub-regional applica - tions. Consequently, we propose a novel algorithm for automated identification and mapping of burned areas at regional scale in semi-arid shrublands. The algorithm uses a set of the Normalized Burned Ratio Index products derived from MODIS time series; using a two-phased cycle, it firstly detects potentially burned pixels while keeping a low commission error (false detection of burned areas), and subsequently labels them as seed patches. Region growing image segmentation algorithms are applied to the seed patches in the second-phase, to define the perimeter of fire affected areas while decreasing omission errors (missing real burned areas). Independently-derived Landsat ETM+ burned-area reference data was used for validation purposes. The correlation between the size of burnt areas detected by the global fire products and independently-derived Landsat reference data ranged from R2 = 0.01 - 0.28, while our algorithm performed showed a stronger correlation coefficient (R2 = 0.96). Our findings confirm prior research calling for caution when using the global fire products locally or regionally.

Causas de incêndios florestais em Portugal continental. Análise estatística da investigação efetuada no último quindénio (1996 a 2010)

Ao longo dos últimos anos, Portugal não tem conseguido travar os incêndios florestais, tanto no que diz respeito número de ocorrências como no que se refere à dimensão das áreas ardidas, sobretudo durante o período estival, quando dominam temperaturas elevadas e a dessecação dos combustíveis gera um ambiente propício à propagação dos incêndios, cuja ignição, em mais de 90% dos casos, tem origem em atos humanos, negligentes e intencionais.Com o objetivo de melhor compreender a origem destes incêndios florestais, o presente estudo visa analisar as causas responsáveis pela ignição dos incêndios florestais em Portugal e acompanhar o modo como elas foram evoluindo, quer ao longo do tempo, quer em termos da sua distribuição espacial, no período compreendido entre 1996 e 2010.

Pattern Extraction and Rule Generation of Forest Fire using Sliding Window Technique

Patterns can be extracted from historical data and used to make predictions of future events. Such predictions are useful to support decision makers in various areas. In this study the sliding window technique is used to reveal forest fire patterns that relate four meteorological conditions (temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and rainfall) with burnt area size. Extracted patterns are then being grouped based on the size of burnt area. Rules are then generated resulting in eight distinct patterns of meteorological conditions that could predict the size of forest fire. Experimental results showed that extracted patterns produced good prediction accuracy.

Uso do fogo em propriedades rurais do cerrado em Cavalcante, GO.

O emprego do fogo é uma prática comum em regiões de menor tecnificação no meio rural. Essa prática requer uma série de cuidados para não causar desastres ambientais, como incêndios florestais. O fogo pode, acidentalmente, atingir cultivos, pastagens e benfeitorias. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os padrões de manejo e os impactos econômicos da utilização do fogo em propriedades rurais, na região da Chapada dos Veadeiros, no município de Cavalcante, estado de Goiás. A coleta de dados foi feita por meio de entrevistas, medições diretas em áreas atingidas, benfeitorias perdidas e avaliação dos custos. Foram entrevistados cinqüenta produtores rurais dos quais, parte utilizava o fogo como ferramenta de manejo agropecuário, e parte que, apesar de não fazerem uso do fogo, sofriam as conseqüências da utilização deste pelos vizinhos e pela falta de técnicas adequadas de prevenção a acidentes. A primeira etapa da coleta de dados foi realizada no ano de 2003. Foram levantadas informações quanto à área perdida com incêndios, prejuízos econômicos e investimentos em prevenção aos incêndios. No segundo levantamento, com foco na estação seca de 2004, feito com os mesmos 50 proprietários, comprovaram-se as informações já levantadas em 2003 e, assim, se pode promover um estudo comparativo entre as características de um período e outro. Concluiu-se que o uso do fogo trouxe elevados prejuízos econômicos tanto para aqueles agricultores que utilizavam o fogo como técnica agrícola quanto para aqueles que não o utilizavam. O desconhecimento das técnicas de substituição do uso do fogo era responsável pelo freqüente uso das queimadas controladas pelos produtores rurais. A falta de investimento em técnicas de prevenção tem levado toda a região a sofrer perdas enormes com os incêndios florestais constantes.