Remote Sensing Modeling and Applications to Wildland Fires

by Kamal R. AL-Rawi (Author)

Forests represent the lung of our planet. Wildfires constitute one of the major problems facing the forest ecosystem in the world. In the last decades number of forest fires has been increased due to the increasing in the human activities and climate change. Fast alarm for forest fires is very crucial issue to prevent their spread. In this book we employed satellite images together with artificial neural networks to build a very fast alarm system for forest fire detection. The satellite NOAA-AVHRR (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration / Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) images are used here. The TAGged Adaptive Resonance Theory ART-TAG Artificial Neural Network ANN is employed. ART-TAG is a supervised form for Compact Fuzzy ART. Burned Area Mapping System (BAMS) and Fire Detection System (FDS) have been built. Integrated Fire Evolution Monitoring System (IFEMS) has been constructed by integrating BAMS and FDS. IFEMS has the ability to distinguish burned area, area in active fire, and area beneath flames. Moreover, it has the ability to detect Fires that occur between two consecutive images and tracing sub pixel fires as well.

by Milan Konecny (Editor), Sisi Zlatanova (Editor), Temenoujka L. Bandrova (Editor)

by Genanaw Alemu (Author)

Forest of the world is under serious threat owing to deforestation and fire. It is vital to understand the extent and pattern of deforestation to devise strategies before the problem results in massive environmental impact. On top of this identifying the degree of susceptibility of the forest to forest fire is also plays the same role. However, determining the extent and pattern of deforestation and identifying the level of susceptibility of the forest to fire is challenging by traditional approach. Thus, this book provides a technique to determine the extent, pattern and rate of deforestation. Moreover, it provides a method to analyze the degree susceptibility of the forest to forest fire. Although fire is one of the devastating factors for most vegetation,surprisingly it creates favorable condition for ericaceous vegetation of Ethiopian highland. The analysis in this book provides help to utilize GIS and remote sensing for forest fire susceptibility analysis, cover change detection and land cover pattern analysis. Particularly it offers useful information to professionals in GIS and remote sensing ,forestry, and agriculture fields.