Forest Fire

On 22 July 2020, UN-SPIDER and the Central American Coordination Centre for Natural Disaster Prevention (CEPREDENAC) joined forces to conduct a webinar on the use of novel space-based products and services to monitor forest fires that took place during the spring of 2020 in Honduras. The webinar included high ranking authorities and participants from several institutions of Honduras such as the Ministry of Environment (MiAmbiente), the National Forestry Conservation Institute (ICF), the Permanent Contingencies Commission (COPECO), the National Fire Brigade and the Humanitarian Rescue Unit (UHR), alongside participants from CEPREDENAC and UN-SPIDER.

Alexander Ariza, an expert on the use of Earth observation to monitor forest fires, and currently a Visiting Scientist with UN-SPIDER, made a presentation on novel products and services developed by the space community that can be used to track forest fires and associated smoke plums, and to assess the burn severity of forest fires…

World Congress on Disaster Management (WCDM) is a unique initiative of DMICS to bring researchers, policy makers and practitioners from around the world in the same platform to discuss various challenging issues of disaster risk management. The mission of WCDM is to promote interaction of science, policy and practices to enhance understanding of risks and advance actions for reducing risks and building resilience to disasters.

The Conference will discuss various topics, including:

At the end of April and the beginning of May 2020, Peten, the northern province or department of Guatemala, experienced severe forest fires that forced Guatemala’s National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Reduction (CONRED) to request the activation of the International Charter Space and Major Disasters to map the geographical extent of the fires.

To support members of Guatemala’s technical, inter-institutional, GIS and remote sensing team for disaster management (GT-SIGER) in addressing the fires and their impact, Dr. Alexander Ariza, a visiting scientist with the UN-SPIDER programme, conducted a webinar on 7 May 2020 to highlight online products and resources that are available to map the burn severity of forest fires.  

Forest fires have a major influence on ecosystems…

The head of the UN-SPIDER Bonn office and a visiting scientist from the Universidad Católica de Manizales will conduct a webinar entitled “Introduction to Satellite Products and Services for the Management of Forest Fires” (in Spanish). The aim of this webinar is to facilitate the use of space-based information for disaster management and emergency response, in particular to monitor and forecast forest fires.

The recording of the webinar is available online.

The webinar will discuss the following topics:

• Introduction to UN-SPIDER and UNOOSA

• Introduction to satellite atmospheric observations of fire emissions

• State-of-the-art Copernicus operational data sets for monitoring smoke and fire emissions to the atmosphere

  • Copernicus Forest Fire Hazard and ECMWF data offering

  • Fire-related applications using LSA-SAF…

EO4GEO aims to bridge the skills gap between the supply and demand of education and training in the space/geospatial sectors, fostering the uptake and integration of space/geospatial data and services in a broad range of application domains. 

The event includes sessions on:

• Introduction to Copernicus and Services (with COVID-19 examples)
• The role of Earth Observation in emergency situations
• NO2 Air pollution monitoring 
• Three case studies on how satellite data combined with other data is valued for agriculture, nature conservation and monitoring of forest for detection of fire and diseases
• The role of EO in emergency situations
• Maritime Spatial Planning. 

The training date is in the past. However, most of the training's content can be accessed here.

This is an online event through interactive data discovery and user practices on state-of-the-art operational datasets for detection of fire, related emissions and impacts

Here is an overview of the program:

• AC-SAF and S5P products
• Intro to data handling tools
• CAMS and GFAS
• EFFIS service
• LAND-SAF
• Sentinel 3 Copernicus Near Real Time (NRT) fire product

Esta capacitación avanzada cubrirá los siguientes temas 1) análisis del cambio en los bosques con datos SAR multi-temporales utilizando Google Earth Engine (GEE); 2) la clasificación de la cobertura terrestre con datos SAR y ópticos utilizando GEE; 3) el mapeo de manglares con SAR; 4) y la estimación de la altura de los bosques utilizando SAR. Cada sesión incluirá una porción teórica describiendo el uso de SAR para el mapeo de la cobertura relevante el enfoque de la sesión, seguida por una demostración de cómo acceder, descargar y analizar datos SAR para el mapeo y monitoreo del bosque. Estas demostraciones utilizan datos y software de libre acceso y de fuente abierta.

Objetivos de Aprendizaje: 

• Para la conclusión de esta capacitación, los participantes podrán:
• Interpretar datos radar para el mapeo de los bosques
• Entender cómo se puede aplicar datos radar para el mapeo de la cobertura terrestre
• Estar familiarizados con…

A series of wildfires have been destroying forests and agricultural land near the abandoned Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Due to concerns about the spread of these fires and the potential dispersion of smoke plumes and radioactive chemicals to nearby inhabited areas, the European Union’s Emergency Response Coordinating Centre (ERCC) requested the activation of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS). Under the Copernicus EMS activation, satellites have mapped the actively burning fires, tracked the transport of smoke from fires, and assessed the damaged areas. These maps provide useful information for fire management and help authorities respond to the consequences of the wildfire.

Based on data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, using a wide-swath multispectral sensor that can…