Monitoring of forest fires from space – ISRO’s initiative for near real-time monitoring of the recent forest fires in Uttarakhand, India

Forest fire or wild land fire causes adverse ecological, economic and social effects worldwide. Globally, forest fires are considered as one of the major drivers of climate change having deleterious impacts on the earth and environment as studies reveal their significance in producing large amounts of trace gases and aerosol particles, which play a pivotal role in tropospheric chemistry and climate. Fire is an ecological process that has affected and shaped terrestrial systems and plant communities. Fire resets vegetation successional trajectories, sets up and maintains a dynamic mosaic of different vegetation structures and compositions, and reduces fuel accumulation. Human action disrupts these processes, with consequential fire behaviour and effects outside the range of natural variation. About 55% of the forest cover is subjected to fires each year, causing an economic loss of over 440 crores of rupees apart from other ecological effects. The Forest Survey of India (FSI) has estimated that 1.45 m ha of forest is affected by fire annually with 6.17% of the forests prone to severe fire damage. Satellite observations have been the only source of observations on fires on a global scale. Hotspots have been observed from a variety of sensors like AVHRR, ATSR, TRMM VIRS, MODIS, and the geostationary satellites GOES and MSG. Active forest fire monitoring using satellite data has been carried out from 2006 as part of the Disaster Management Support Programme of ISRO. The activity provides timely information on fires to State Forest Departments across India for forest fire control and management activities. Active fire monitoring uses satellite data from MODIS flying on the TERRA and AQUA spacecraft and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite data from the Suomi National Polarorbiting Partnership (SNPP-VIIRS). Satellite data are received and processed at Shadnagar, Telangana in near real-time using science process algorithms (SPAs) obtained from the Direct Readout Portal (https://directreadout.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov). The algorithms used are described in the literature. Information regarding active forest fire location is disseminated to FSI and State Forest Departments through e-mail and short message service (SMS) within half an hour of satellite overpass. The information is also published in BHUVAN (http://bhuvan.nrsc.gov. in/disaster/disaster/disaster.php?id=fire). Post-fire burned area assessments are carried out using the AWiFS sensor flown on the IRS ResourceSat 1 and 2 satellites for specific fire events. The northern Indian state of Uttarakhand is richly forested (24,240 sq. km, 45% of the state’s geographical area) and typically exhibits forest fire activity from February to June, with a peak in fire incidence in May and June. During the April 2016 event, forest fires were widespread covering most of the forested regions of the state and the number of fires observed was unusually high. Here we present satellite observations on the event. Figure 1 shows the spatial distribution of active forest fire detections during 24 April–4 May 2016 in Uttarakhand and Figure 2 shows the temporal occurrence