Early warning and damage assessment for forest fire

This paper shows two of the main objectives of this proposal: to develop a suitable early warning technique to predict forest fire and to adapt a monitoring technique of carbon emissions from forest fires. The basis for the development of an early warning technique to predict forest fire is defined including forest greenness and fuel moisture content evolution of different forest classes. An analysis of the fire emissions was carried out to evaluate the amount of CO/CO2 emitted. From MOPITT data the seasonal evolution of emissions was obtained over populated and no populated areas. The next step was to estimate emissions using two different approaches: seasonal evolution and single fire/cluster analysis: the emissions of a large fire were determined to be of several tens of kilotons. Finally, the developed procedure was able to distinguish between emissions coming from natural sources from them coming from forest fires. The main results of these objectives are shown.