Assessing Fire Danger from Remotely Sensed Products within the Amur Tiger Habitat
Tatiana
V.
Loboda, University of Mryland, tloboda@hermes.geog.umd.edu
(Presenting)
Forests of the Russian Far East present world’s richest temperate forests and the main habitat of the critically endangered Amur Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica). The changes in the natural fire cycle prompted by decades of intensive economic development and the rising frequency of large fires are recognized as one of the gravest threats to this ecosystem. The Amur tiger’s low population densities and reproductive potential even within high quality habitat make this species particularly vulnerable to fire induced habitat reduction, degradation and fragmentation. This project presents an approach to Fire Danger assessment within a broader framework of Fire Threat Modeling. The remotely sensed data driven Fire Threat Model (FTM) has been developed to provide spatially explicit and temporally dynamic quantitative assessment of fire threat to the Amur tiger. Coarse and moderate resolution remotely sensed data products from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), SPOT-VGT and Landsat/ETM+ were used to explore causes and distribution of fire within the Amur Tiger habitat, conditions leading to significant fire events, and fire impact severity for 2001 - 2005. The analysis shows large interannual and intra-annual variability in of fire danger levels within the tiger habitat. Fire regimes of the Russian Far East are primarily driven by the presence of the summer monsoon which minimizes fire occurrence in the areas of high importance for tigers. The disruption of summer monsoons leads to a rapid increase in levels of fire threat. Additionally, fire occurrence is strongly influenced by anthropogenic activity.