Monitoring the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere in Portugal due to forest fires, in the summer of 2013

Abstract

Forest fires are one of the most devastating natural disasters occurring in Portugal mainland over the summer season, with a strong impact on the economy, environment and climate. In last four decades the increase of wildfires problems in Portugal linked to Industrialization, urbanization, rural exodus (in recent past), and emigration (nowadays), with tendency to be worst in the future, lead to a mutation in Portuguese society. Severity of wildfires its worst year to year, besides the effort of the State, increasing human, operational, technical and economic resources to solve the problem. The fire combat continue very difficult and the number of occurrences of fires getting out of control, becoming larger and larger with a heady impact the increase of destruction. Present work aim to contribute to a development of a support decision tool to be used in combat operations, monitoring fire spots and fire evolution using LSA SAF (Land Surface Analysis Satellite Application Facilities) products. The FRP (Fire Radiative Power) a product of LSA SAF are available and free distributed, in NRT (Near Real Time) and off-line, every 15 minutes for all pixels with a delay of about 20 minutes. These data can, subsequently, be used to obtain the carbon (or the equivalent CO2), estimated for each pixel and integrated for a given area and period of time or, simply, to map and monitor forest fires. This work is showing the possibility of monitoring forest fires, using FRP product with about 4 km of spatial resolution, taking advantage of the very interesting temporal resolution (15 minutes). As test, two major wildfires of 2013 had been used: Alfândega da Fé (Picões), from 8 to 11 July, and another one, in the region of Caramulo, from 21 to 30 August. Burnt area was, respectively, 14000 ha and 9416 ha, according data provide by ICNF.