Fire and the Environment

The Department of Geography is in the forefront of research on the development of satellite-based fire information and the subsequent utilization of this satellite information to investigate several aspects of fire impacts on the environment.

Vegetation fires are a global phenomenon and an important agent of global environmental change. Vegetation fires result in significant amounts of trace gases and aerosols and affect vegetation structure and composition, biogeochemical cycling, hydrological processes and air quality. Today, fire is an important cause of land cover change in many land use systems worldwide. It is also a common land management practice, with a number of associated policy issues. Unmanaged fires can be a major hazard to human life and result in large economic losses.

Fire related research projects in the Department explore both the physical and human dimensions of fire phenomena. The projects include both basic and applied research. For example, developing remote sensing methods for extracting fire and fuels related information and developing operational prototypes for delivering fire information to a diverse user community. Research on fire emissions has applications for air quality and national reporting of emissions.

Members of the Department have developed partnerships at the national level with the USFS Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC) and internationally with a number of government and non-government fire monitoring organizations, through the Global Observation of Forest Cover/Global Observation of Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC/GOLD) program and the UN Interagency Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) Taskforce on Wildland Fires.

Example Projects

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Global Fire Information	Fire Mapping Team	Fire Product Development
Fire & Carbon Cycling	Africa Fire Network	MODIS Rapid Response