1st Remote Sensing Webinar
Leveraging Remote Sensing and Geoinformatics: Fire and Related Emissions for Environmental Health
Human civilization has long been using fire to modify land for their benefit and expansionism. The last four decades have seen an unprecedented increase in fire incidences (satellite-monitored locations) across the globe. Wildfires are raging around the world, burning the natural vegetation that produces vital oxygen for the entire planet. Fire monitoring by remote sensing can be achieved using polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites. The polar-orbiting satellites that are used in fire detection and monitoring include MODIS, AVHRR, ASTER and Landsat. The application of these satellites is limited by their temporal resolutions. The remote sensing of wildfires can solve disputes on where a fire started, the spread thereof and the area destroyed, even years after the fire event. With remote sensing, the type of land cover can be determined. Scientists have used satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission, combined with the Sentinel-5P satellite, to detect individual methane emissions from space. Humans are also feeling the impacts of the fires, as air quality decreases in areas near and far from the fire source. In addition to the devastation to habitat, these fires also have an atmospheric impact. Air quality is diminished, and the global climate can be changed because of the particles that are released into the atmosphere when forests burn. Scientific investigations attribute this increase to climate change increasing the number of dry days, the number of heatwaves, and declining residual soil moisture during the summer season (so-called fire seasons). Fire is not only increasing in number (locations) and duration, but also in severity. Some of the social practices, to name only a few (relevant to India), are livestock grazing, "bidi patta" (rural cigarettes) collection, shifting cultivation, hunting, agriculture residue burning, and urban waste burning. Do we need change in the policy for the continuation of social practices? These fires affect the forest ecosystem, species regeneration, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation, black carbon deposits on glaciers (enhancing the rate of glacier melting), and pollution; they also release GHGs into the atmosphere (adding to the effect of global warming) and health hazards. We here invite distinguished scientists to address the issues connected to fire and the resultant emissions against the background of deteriorating environmental health and climate change.
Date: 27 September 2022
Time: 12:00 pm CEST | 6:00 am EDT | 3:30 pm IST | 6:00 pm CST Asia
Webinar ID: 835 8435 7066
Webinar Secretariat: remotesensing.webinar@mdpi.com