Developing the static fire danger index using geospatial technology

Forest fires in Uttarakhand state have considerable economic, social and environmental impacts on humans and biodiversity. Forest fire danger indices are important tools for mitigating and suppressing forest fires, but, operational fire danger index system has not been developed for the India. In general, Fire danger indices have been developed based on the parameters which are associated for the cause of ignition, spreading of forest fires. These properties include forest fuel type, topographic conditions and moisture conditions. Vegetation and topographic conditions are static, i.e. they do not change frequently, whereas moisture conditions are dynamic. Dynamic properties such as air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed changes regularly in a day. In this study, Static Fire danger Index has been developed using MODIS Land cover type yearly L3 global 500 m SIN grid (MCD12Q1) and ASTER GDEM datasets. International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) land cover type has been generated from MCD12Q1, which has been used to compute the forest fuel type index based on historical fire data. Slope danger index, Aspect danger index, Elevation danger index and Terrain rugged Index has been computed from the ASTER GDEM datasets. Finally, Static Fire Danger Index has been developed by integrating the above mentioned indices. Estimated accuracy of static fire danger index was around 95%, i.e. developed static fire danger index was accurately model the fire danger over the study area.