Forest Fires in the Russian Federation

20 July 1999


The NOAA AVHRR satellite image composite of 20 July 1999 shows fire activities in eastern Russia.

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Fig.1. This NOAA AVHRR composite of 20 July 1999 was generated at 02:02 GMT and used for this composite the satellite NOAA 12 and 14. The red squares indicate regions of active fires.
(Source:  The satellite maps containing fire information can be accessed under "Cloudiness Maps" at http://nffc.infospace.ru/engl/main.htm)

For details (enlargements, other scenes produced earlier or later) the GFMC readers are encouraged to click on the hyperlinks provided by the Avialesookhrana website. The Avialesookhrana homepage from the National Forest Fire Centre of Russia provides up-to-date NOAA images for the whole of the Russian Federation at http://nffc.infospace.ru/engl/main.htm . The web site of the Space Monitoring Information Support Laboratory provides extensive links to sites with satellite imagery for the Russian Federation, meteorological information as well as fire related images are accessible.

 

Several vegetation fires were detected by OSEI with the NOAA-14 AVHRR HRPT satellite:

click here to enlarge (774 KB) click here to enlarge (1.2 MB)

Fig.2. and 3. The left image shows heat signatures and smoke plumes from areas of fire burning east of Moscow in western Russia. (18 July 1999). The right image shows heat signatures and smoke from areas of fire, some of them quite large, burning in eastern Russia and on the island of Sakhalin. This same area was plagued by serious fires during the summer of 1998. (19 July 1999).
(Source: http://www.osei.noaa.gov/)

The Aerial Forest Fire Protection Service Avialesookhrana of the Federal Forest Service of Russia reports the state of fire in the 1999 fire season to the GFMC. The latest report is from 9 July 1999:

Up to 9 July 1999 a total of 17,053 fires occurred in forests under the control of the Federal Forest Service of Russia, burning a total of 287,615 ha of forest and 144,711 ha non-forest areas (inside forest lands). For all agencies a total of 18,089 fires have affected 313,787 ha forest and 192,019 ha non-forest areas during the current fire season. 

During the day of 8 July 1999 a total of 425 fires were burning and affected 1,271 ha forest and 415 ha of non-forest land. The regions with the highest fire activity on 8 July were:
Vologda region - 22 fires - 252 ha (forest and non-forest)
Komi region - 18 fires - 30 ha
Krasnoyarsk region - 18 fires - 89 ha
Khabarovsk region - 28 fires - 184 ha
Moscow region - 46 fires - 12 ha 

There are some large fires (>200 ha) burning in Nijni Novgorod and Khabarovsk regions, totalling 6.

The National Forest Fire Center of Russia AVIALESOOKHRANA realizes forest and deer pasture fire control on a territory of more than 800 million ha. The structure of Avialesookhrana includes 21 Regional Forest Fire Centers (aviation bases), two independent subdivisions, uniform clothes factory and the Vladimir state aviation company. Avialesookhrana rents annually from the Civil aviation companies 600 aircraft and has its own aviation park consisting of 60 aircraft including fixedwing planes and helicopters, 20 from them are airtankers and airscoopers. The staff of Avialesookhrana consists of highly skilled specialists: 520 pilot-observes, 4500 smokejumpers and helirappellers as well as more than 2,300 other specialists.

The average number of fires occurs annually are 15000-30000. With the help of aviation are detected about 85% and put out more than 60% of total fires in Russian forests.

For more details on fire in the Russian Federation: See IFFN Country Notes.

Scientific details on fire in the Russian Federation are provided by the Fire Research Campaign Asia-North (FIRESCAN) report.

Bibliography on fire in ecosystems of boreal Eurasia:
One of the results of the first international fire science conference in the Russian Federation (1993) was the publication of a monograph on fire in boreal Eurasia, including some selected contributions on boreal North America. The literature cited in the monograph contains numerous publications which in many cases are not easily accessible. To facilitate literature search the bibliographical sources are provided by topic (chapter).

Goldammer, J.G. and V.V.Furyaev. 1996. Fire in Ecosystems of Boreal Eurasia. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 390 p.


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