Remote Sensing and Geo-information for Forest Fires in Sri Lanka

Degradation of forest resources due to forest fires in Sri Lanka is getting worst and the Disaster Management Centre reported that rate is more than one fire per day. In the perspective of forest management forest fires is useful since it is considered as the natural way of way of forest management but at the same time it has many argumentative consequences on the environment. In Sri Lanka, all most all the forest fires are human induced and in some areas like Balangoda it has become a localized hazard. Although the government efforts to reduce forest fire frequency and intensity for fire prevention those are still insufficient. Moreover, the generation of fire risk maps is still lacking for the country to control forest fires. This research is focused on three aspects. First is to conduct time series analysis to extract, burn areas within last 10 years, second to map the potential of forest fire risk and third to suggest suitable fire preventive measures. Due to several limitations exist, such as the nature of fires in the study forest area and also the limited no of data, the first aspect is not revealed an appropriate result.

Autorentext

Panchali Umeshika Fonseka, Research Scientist in the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies in Sri Lanka. She obtained her first degree with honors from the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka and Master of Science in Earth System Science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her main interests are RS and GIS for the environment.