Monitoring of forest fires in Bhadra wildlife sanctuary

The Western Ghats constitute one of the three biodiversity hot spots in India, which is under constant threat from various quarters. Among the several anthropogenic causes, fire is one of the important anthropogenic factor, which plays a pivotal role in vegetation succession and ecosystem processes. It is very important to understand the ecological changes due to fire and other anthropogenic factors for conservation and management of biodiversity. Because of its synoptic, multi-spectral and multi-temporal nature remote sensing data can be a good source for forest fire monitoring. In the present study, an effort has been made to monitor the burnt areas using March 2000 and 2004 IRS LISS - III data. The study revealed that an area of 2.15 km2 and 4.46 km2 was affected by fire in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Repeated drought, followed by mass flowering and dying of bamboo accelerated the spread of fire from ground to canopy in areas with high bamboo density. © Indian Society of Remote Sensing 2008.