scholarly journals Evaluation of long term forest fires in India with respect to state administrative boundary, forest category of LULC and future climate change scenario: A Geospatial Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-343
Author(s):  
Firoz Ahmad ◽  
Md Meraj Uddin ◽  
Laxmi Goparaju

Abstract Analysing the forest fires events in climate change scenario is essential for protecting the forest from further degradation. Geospatial technology is one of the advanced tools that has enormous capacity to evaluate the number of data sets simultaneously and to analyse the hidden relationships and trends. This study has evaluated the long term forest fire events with respect to India’s state boundary, its seasonal monthly trend, all forest categories of LULC and future climate anomalies datasets over the Indian region. Furthermore, the spatial analysis revealed the trend and their relationship. The state wise evaluation of forest fire events reflects that the state of Mizoram has the highest forest fire frequency percentage (11.33%) followed by Chhattisgarh (9.39%), Orissa (9.18%), Madhya Pradesh (8.56%), Assam (8.45%), Maharashtra (7.35%), Manipur (6.94%), Andhra Pradesh (5.49%), Meghalaya (4.86%) and Telangana (4.23%) when compared to the total country’s forest fire counts. The various LULC categories which represent the forest show some notable forest fire trends. The category ‘Deciduous Broadleaf Forest’ retain the highest fire frequency equivalent to 38.1% followed by ‘Mixed Forest’ (25.6%), ‘Evergreen Broadleaf Forest’ (16.5%), ‘Deciduous Needle leaf Forest’ (11.5%), ‘Shrub land’ (5.5%), ‘Evergreen Needle leaf Forest’ (1.5%) and ‘Plantations’ (1.2%). Monthly seasonal variation of forest fire events reveal the highest forest fire frequency percentage in the month of ‘March’ (55.4%) followed by ‘April’ (28.2%), ‘February’ (8.1%), ‘May’ (6.7%), ‘June’ (0.9%) and ‘January’ (0.7%). The evaluation of future climate data for the year 2030 shows significant increase in forest fire seasonal temperature and abrupt annual rainfall pattern; therefore, future forest fires will be more intensified in large parts of India, whereas it will be more crucial for some of the states such as Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Assam and in the lower Sivalik range of Himalaya. The deciduous forests will further degrade in future. The highlight/results of this study have very high importance because such spatial relationship among the various datasets is analysed at the country level in view of the future climate scenario. Such analysis gives insight to the policymakers to make sustainable future plans for prioritization of the various state forests suffering from forest fire keeping in mind the future climate change scenario.

Epidemiology ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. S97
Author(s):  
Jonathan Patz ◽  
Howard Frumkin ◽  
Michell Klein ◽  
Michelle Bell ◽  
Hugh Ellis ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teressa Negassa Muleta

Abstract Background Several water resources projects are under planning and implementation in the Baro-Akobo basin. Currently, the planning and management of these projects is relied on historical data. So far, hardly any study has addressed water resources management and adaptation measures in the face of changing water balances due to climate change in the basin. The main bottleneck to this has been lack of future climate change scenario base data over the basin. The current study is aimed at developing future climate change scenario for the basin. To this end, Regional Climate Model (RCM) downscaled data for A1B emission scenario was employed and bias corrected at basin level using observed data. Future climate change scenario was developed using the bias corrected RCM output data with the basic objective of producing baseline data for sustainable water resources development and management in the basin. Result The projected future climate shows an increasing trend for both maximum and minimum temperatures; however, for the case of precipitation it does not manifest a systematic increasing or decreasing trend in the next century. The projected mean annual temperature increases from the baseline period by an amount of 1 °C and 3.5 °C respectively, in 2040s and 2090s. Similarly, evapotranspiration has been found to increase to an extent of 25% over the basin. The precipitation is predicted to experience a mean annual decrease of 1.8% in 2040s and an increase of 1.8% in 2090s over the basin for the A1B emission scenario. Conclusion The study resulted in a considerable future change in climatic variables (temperature, precipitation, and evapotranspiration) on the monthly and seasonal basis. These have an implication on hydrologic extremes-drought and flooding, and demands dynamic water resources management. Hence the study gives a valuable base information for water resources planning and managers, particularly for modeling reservoir inflow-climate change relations, to adapt reservoir operation rules to the real-time changing climate.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. e0116762 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathukumalli Srinivasa Rao ◽  
Pettem Swathi ◽  
Chitiprolu Anantha Rama Rao ◽  
K. V. Rao ◽  
B. M. K. Raju ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (12) ◽  
pp. 2369-2380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héloïse Le Goff ◽  
Mike D. Flannigan ◽  
Yves Bergeron

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate whether future climate change would trigger an increase in the fire activity of the Waswanipi area, central Quebec. First, we used regression analyses to model the historical (1973–2002) link between weather conditions and fire activity. Then, we calculated Fire Weather Index system components using 1961–2100 daily weather variables from the Canadian Regional Climate Model for the A2 climate change scenario. We tested linear trends in 1961–2100 fire activity and calculated rates of change in fire activity between 1975–2005, 2030–2060, and 2070–2100. Our results suggest that the August fire risk would double (+110%) for 2100, while the May fire risk would slightly decrease (–20%), moving the fire season peak later in the season. Future climate change would trigger weather conditions more favourable to forest fires and a slight increase in regional fire activity (+7%). While considering this long-term increase, interannual variations of fire activity remain a major challenge for the development of sustainable forest management.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 39-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Firoz Ahmad ◽  
Md Meraj Uddin ◽  
Laxmi Goparaju

AbstractGeospatial evaluation of various datasets is extremely important because it gives a better comprehension of the past, present and future and can therefore be significantly utilized in effective decision making strategies. This study examined the relationships, using geospatial tools, between various diversified datasets such as land use/land cover (LULC), long term Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) based changes, long term forest fire points, poverty percentage, tribal percentage, forest fire hotspots, climate change vulnerability, agricultural vulnerability and future (2030) climate change anomalies (RCP-6) of Jharkhand state, India, for a better understanding and knowledge of its vegetation health, LULC, poverty, tribal population and future climate change impact. The long term NDVI (1982-2006) evaluation revealed negative change trends in seven northwest districts of Jharkhand state, these were: Hazaribag, Ramgarh, Palamu, Lohardaga, Chatra, Garhwa and Latehar. The forests as well as the agriculture of these districts have lost their greenness during this period. The forest fire frequency events were found to be more pronounced in the land use/land cover of “tropical lowland forests, broadleaved, evergreen, <1000 m” category, and were roughly twice the intensity of the “tropical mixed deciduous and dry deciduous forests” category. In the nine districts of Jharkhand it was found that 40 % of the population was living below the poverty line which is around twice the national average. The highest poverty districts, in percentage, were: Garwah (53.93), Palamu (49.24), Latehar (47.99) and Chatra (46.2). The southwest and south of Jharkhand state shows a tribal population density of more than 40%. The climate change vulnerability was found to be highest in the district of Saraikela followed by Pashchim Singhbhum, whereas agricultural vulnerability was found to be highest in the district of Pashchim Singhbhum followed by Saraikela, Garhwa, Simdega, Latehar, Palamu and Lohardaga. The temperature anomalies prediction for the year 2030 shows an increasing trend in temperature with values of 0.8°C to 1°C in the state of Jharkhand. The highest increases were observed in the districts of Pashchim Singhbhum, Simdega and Saraikela. Based on these evaluations we can conclude that a few of the districts of Jharkhand, such as Pashchim Singhbhum, Garhwa, Palamu and Latehar need to be prioritized for development on an urgent basis. The outcomes of this study would certainly guide the policymakers to prepare more robust plans when keeping in mind the future climate change impacts for the prioritization of various districts of Jharkhand which suffer from extreme poverty, diminished livelihood and insignificant agricultural productivity for the betterment of the people of Jharkhand based on their adaptive capacity.


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