Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop of the EARSeL Special Interest Group on Forest Fires Advances in Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Forest Fire Management Towards an Operational Use of Remote Sensing in Forest Fire Management

Abstract

During the last two decades, interest in forest fire research has grown steadily, as more and more local and global impacts of burning are being identified. The definition of fire regimes as well as the identification of factors explaining spatial and temporal variations in these fire characteristics are recently hot fields of research. Changes in these fire regimes have important social and ecological implications. Whether these changes are mainly caused by land use or climate warming, greater efforts are demanded to manage forest fires at different temporal and spatial scales.

The European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories (EARSeL)’s Special Interest Group (SIG) on Forest Fires was created in 1995, following the initiative of several researchers studying Mediterranean fires in Europe. It has promoted five technical meetings and several specialised publications since then, and represents one of the most active groups within the EARSeL. The SIG has tried to foster interaction among scientists and managers who are interested in using remote sensing data and techniques to improve the traditional methods of fire risk estimation and the assessment of fire effect.

The aim of the 6th international workshop is to analyze the operational use of remote sensing in forest fire management, bringing together scientists and fire managers to promote the development of methods that may better serve the operational community. This idea clearly links with international programmes of a similar scope, such as the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and the Global Observation of Forest Cover/Land Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) who, together with the Joint Research Center of the European Union sponsor this event.

Finally, I would like to thank the local organisers for the considerable lengths they have gone to in order to put this material together, and take care of all the details that the organization of this event requires.