Description

Wildfire is a major forest disturbance in the forests in northeastern China. Fires in this region have extraordinary environmental and social impacts because it’s location close to densely populated regions in China and other northeastern Asian countries. This study describes the applications of Chinese satellite products in forest fire management in northeastern China. China has launched a total of 14 Fengyun (FY) (Chinese words meaning wind and cloud) meteorological satellites since 1988, seven for each of polar-orbiting and geostationary types. Half of them are in service currently. Besides weather, FW satellites provide extensive products for forest fire management, including fuel classification, fire detection, fire spread and smoke transport monitoring, damage estimate, and post-fire recovering assessment. Fuels are classified based on FY NDVI products combined with techniques such as principal component analysis and GIS. Fire detection and monitoring is the most important application of FY products. The catastrophic fires occurred in the Daxinganlin Mountains region in May, 2006, for example, were monitored by the FY satellite remote sensing throughout the entire burning period, providing the information necessary for planning and implementing fire suppression. The time resolution of the FY polar-orbiting satellite products has continued to increase, from one hour in 1997 with FY-2A/B to about one minute now and near future with FY-4A/B, leading to dramatic increase in the capacity of fire detection and monitoring. Meanwhile, the FY geostationary satellite products improved from one hour with normal scan to 6 minutes with region rapid scan, increasing the accuracy in estimating burned areas, fire intensity, and smoke. Nine more satellites will be added to the FY series from 2016-2011, which will provide more powerful remote sensing products for fire management in the boreal forests in China.