Vulnerability of India’s Forests to Fires

This report, issued by the Forest Survey of India, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change aims to identify forested areas in the country vulnerable to fires. The primary focus of this report is to aid the forest departments and planner in managing forest resources. Utilizing satellite sensor data, the study examines forest fire occurrences from 2004 to 2011 to assess vulnerable regions based on the frequency of fire.The 120-page report is divided into 23 sections: Introduction (Section 1); Near Real Time Forest Fire Monitoring (Section 2); MODIS Based Web Fire Mapper (Section 3); Detection of Fire Spots by MODIS (Section 4); Data Acquisition by the Base Station and Uploading the Information to Web Fire Mapper (Section 5); Forest Fire Monitoring Undertaken by FSI (Section 6); Review of the Past Studies (Section 7); Objective of the Study (Section 8); Data, Material and the Software Used (Section 9); Methodology (Section 10); Generation of Forest Fire Points (Section 11); Historical Data of Forest Fires (Section 12); Forest Density Classes Vulnerable to Forest Fire (Section 13); Forest Type Groups Vulnerable to Forest Fire (Section 14); Forest Fire Vulnerable Toposheets Based on Forest Fire Occurrences (Section 15); Identification of Vulnerable Grids (Section 16); Creation of the 5 km Buffer around Each Fire Point (Section 17); Generation of the Vulnerable Map (Section 18); Identification of Vulnerable Districts (Section 19); Result and Discussions (Section 20); Vulnerability in Term of Time Period: State-wise Crucial Time Period (Section 21); Conclusion (Section 22); and Scope for Further Study and Analysis (Section 23).