Evaluating the use of remotely sensed fires to predict areas ofrapid forest change in the tropics

摘要

This work examines the relationship between vegetation fires, as detected by earth orbiting satellites and deforestation in tropical South America, Africa and Asia. Fine spatial resolution satellite data were used to measure the deforestation that occurred in the mid 1990’s in 97 sites spread across the tropical forests of the world. These data were then compared to the number of fires occurring in these sites, as detected by the NOAA-AVHRR satellite between April 1992 to December 1993 (daytime) and ESR2-ATSR2 satellite data between 1997 and 1998. Furthermore, DMSP derived fire data from the Operational Linescan System (OLS) (between October 1, 1994 and April 30, 1995) was correlated to deforestation rates for the South American continent, but proved to show the weakest relationship. In contrast, AVHRR and ATSR datasets showed an overall much stronger statistical significant relationship between frequency of fires and deforestation rates. This relationship however depends on the geographical region (biome), the sensor type and the temporal sampling. When used appropriately and carefully fire frequency information can be used as an indicator of forest cover change.