Early Warning and Monitoring System for Forest and Grassland Fires by remote sensing data

Frequently happening forest and grassland fires do a lot of economic and environment damages and even threaten the people´s lives. Forest and grassland fires, as a natural hazard, can be predicted, controlled and, in many cases, prevented. This paper focuses on the development and applications of the Early Warning and Monitoring System for Forest and Grassland Fires (EWMS/FGF), which was used as one of the essential tools for fires management in China. The EWMS/FGF was developed based on the environmental characteristics of the forests and grasslands in China and the mechanisms of the forests and grasslands fires occurrence and expansion. Supported by remote sensing, GIS and network techniques, the system is capable of providing: i) early warning for forest and grassland fires danger, ii) near real time fires monitoring; and iii) fast post-fire damage assessment. The information of fires can be distributed quickly through the Internet, and were provided to the decision-makers to help them make the right decisions for fires disaster mitigation