Fire Intensity Estimation

Dr inż Agata Hościło została laureatką Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej w programie POMOST (6/2012).
 
Project title: A novel approach to estimate fire intensity and carbon emissions over a decade of fires in Poland
Duration: 1.05.2013 – 30.06.2015

About the project:
Poland has witnessed an increasing trend in number of fires over the last decades. Statistics provided by the Join Research Centre in Ispra show that Poland is a third European country in number of fires reported annually. It is important, therefore, to examine the causes and consequences of fires in various regions of Poland. To date fire monitoring in Poland is carried out explicitly on the ground and the Earth Observation data, which are recognised as valuable source of information about fire event, are not considered. This project will apply a novel satellite-based approach to fire intensity and fire emissions assessment to better constrain the likely contribution made by Polish fires to climate change. This innovative research project will lead to a reduction in the uncertainties surrounding estimates of carbon losses and emissions from fires. It will also provide best possible data on fire regime dynamics and information on illegal early spring burning.
 
This project will address the following research objectives:
1) Quantification of the spatial and temporal pattern of fires and investigation of changes in fireregime in Poland over the last decade.
2) Investigation of fire intensity and identification of areas particularly vulnerable to spring burning.
3) Estimation of the amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane released through biomass combustion using innovative state of the art satellite based method (‘top down’ approach).

Scientific partner:
The Department of Geography, University of Leicester (UK) has over 15 years of experience in mapping fire scars and evaluating their impact on environment and society in various ecosystems. The collaboration will be focused on know how exchange about retrieval of fire intensity and estimation of emissions from remote sensed data over Poland. Both institutions are very much aware of the need for accurate information on fire damage and disturbance because of the need to report emissions and damage to agricultural regions.

MSC Student:
A MSc student Urszula Pytlak from the Department of Geography (faculty: Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing), University of Warsaw was granted with a master thesis stipend founded through the project by the Foundation for Polish Science. Urszula Pytlak is currently working on her MSc dissertation under dr. Agata Hościło (IGiK) and dr. hab Bogdan Zagajewski (UW) supervision.

Urszula Pytlak is a very active student, she is a member of the management board of the Geoinformatics and Remote Sensing Student’s Association (KNGiT UW). She was involved in organizing the GIS Day 2013 and GIS day 2014. Now, she is involved in organizing the Earsel & ISPRS Young Scientist Days (16-20 June 2014), where she is going to give an oral presentation on ‘Spatio-temporal distribution of active fires from MODIS over Poland for the period 2001-2013’.

Achievements:

Fire intensity expressed as Fire Radiative Power (MWats) for the fires recorded by MODIS in 2003 (on the left) and 2013 (on the right).

Fire intensity expressed as Fire Radiative Power (MWats) for the fires recorded by MODIS in 2003.

  • Fires that occured in summer and spring are more intensive that autumn's fires
  • Extremely intensive fires occure more often in summer and autumn time
  • The analysis of variability of fire intensity in relation to land cover type confirmed that the most intensive fires took place in wetland areas

The first experimental prescribed burning in moorlands in Poland visible for satellite: LINK

Participation in conferences/workshops:
Agata Hościło was invited by the Polish Academy of Science to give a presentation at the 3rd workshop of the International Biomass Burning Initiative (IBBI) in Schloss Ringberg, Germany, 23-26 April 2014. Title of the presentation: ‘Long term consequences of burning on peatland vegetation and carbon dynamics’.

Agata Hościło gave an oral presentation at the 34th Earsel Symposium 2014 in Warsaw 16-20 June 2014. Title of the presentation: ‘Can remotely sensed data be used to support monitoring of fires in Poland?’.
 
Urszula Pytlak gave an oral presentation at the Earsel & ISPRS Young Scientist Days in Warsaw, 16-20 June 2014. Title of the presentation: ‘Spatio-temporal distribution of active fires from MODIS over Poland for the period 2001-2013’ .

Agata Hościło gave a poster presentation at the 2014 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium and 35th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing (IGARSS2014), 13-18 July 2014, Quebec, Canada. Title: 'Use of satellite data for monitoring fire events in Poland'.
Publications:
Hościło A., Turlej K., 2013, Using active fires to detect fires across vegetation types in Poland, the 9th EARSeL Forest Fire Workshop in Coombe Abbey, UK, 15-17 October 2013.

Hościło A., Turlej K., 2014, Use of satellite data for monitoring fire events in Poland, Proc. 2014 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium and 35th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing (IGARSS2014), 13-18 July 2014, Quebec, Canada, pp. 828-831; 978-1-4799-5775-0/14/.0000 ©2014 IEEE.

Important links:
Forest Fire Danger map prepared by the Forest Fire Protection Laboratory
http://bazapozarow.ibles.pl/zagrozenie/
Contact:
Agata Hościło, e-mail: agata.hoscilo@igik.edu.p, tel: +48 22 3291976