Drylands: Fire in Drylands
| Analytical Overview |
| Fire data was clipped to the dryland extent for Africa, Australia, and South America for display on this map. |
Map Projection
Geographic
Map Description
The European Space Agency for Africa, Latin America, and Indo-Malaysia/Oceania has used AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) data to map the location of all fires detected during 1993. The fire maps show that fire on the African continent is confined by the Sahara Desert to the north, by the Horn of Africa to the east, and by the Kalahari Desert to the south. A somewhat similar pattern is found in South America where the least number of fires occur in the Amazon Basin and southern Patagonia, and the greatest number occur in areas of eastern Brazil and Venezuela.
Although some fires are recognized as important management tools in drylands, new fire datasets showing broad-scale fire distribution raise new questions. Is the frequency and extent of fires shown in these maps typical or has there been a recent increase? What are the short- and long-term effects of these fires on ecosystem services? We will be looking toward continued monitoring using satellite data as well as field studies to provide answers.
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Citation:
WRI. 2002. World Resources Institute. Drylands, People, and Ecosystem Goods and Services: A Web-based Geospatial Analysis. Available online at: http://www.wri.org
Sources:
- GLCCD, 1998. Loveland, T.R., B.C. Reed, J.F. Brown, D.O. Ohlen, Z. Zhu, L. Yang, and J. Merchant. 1998. "Development of a Global Land Cover Characteristics Database and IGBP DISCover from 1-km AVHRR Data" In International Journal of Remote Sensing21(6-7): 1303-1330.
Available On-line at: Source Link.Global Land Cover Characteristics Database, Version 1.2.. - Arino, O. and J.M. Melinotte. 1998. The 1993 Africa Fire Map.International Journal of Remote Sensing19(11):