Forest Fires in the Russian Federation: 28 July 1999
Forest Fires in the Russian Federation
28 July 1999
The NOAA AVHRR satellite image composite of 28 July 1999 shows fire activities in eastern Russia.
Fig.1. This NOAA AVHRR composite of 28 July 1999 was generated at 01:09 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 POES AVHRR LAC satellite:
Fig.2. The image shows heat signatures and smoke plumes from areas of fire burning west of Olekminsk near the Lena River in southeastern Russia. Dotted lines in the image are due to “noise” in the satellite data.
(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 20 July 1999:
Up to 20 July 1999 a total 20,645 fires occurred in forests under the control of the Federal Forest Service of Russia burning a total of 342,000 ha of forest and 151,000 ha non-forested areas (inside forest lands).
During the day of 19 July 1999 a total of 989 fires were burning and affected 10,189 ha forest and 979 ha non-forest land. The region with the highest fire activity on 19 July were:
Volga region – 52 fires – 35 ha (forest and non forest)
Krasnoyarsk region – 91 fires – 454 ha
Leningrad region – 215 fires – 135 ha
Khabarovsk region – 139 fires – 7055 ha
Some large fires (> 200 ha) are burning in Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutia regions, totalling 26.
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).
