GFMC: Forest Fires in the Russian Federation

Forest Fires in the Russian Federation

24 August 2001

Avialesookhrana from the National Forest Fire Centre of Russia provides up-to-date NOAA images for the whole of the Russian Federation and neighbour territories. 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.
The NOAA AVHRR satellite image composite of 24 August 2001 shows fire activities in the Russian Federation.

NOAA 12 & 14 AVHRR composite of 22 August 2001, 03:03 GMT.
The red squares indicate regions of active fires. For details the GFMC readers are encouraged to
use the hyperlinks provided by Avialesookhrana, the Aerial Forest Fire Protection Service of the
Federal Forest service of Russia. (Source: Avialesookhrana cloudiness maps)

 According to the situation report of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia 19 August 2001 a total of 31 fires affected 51 ha forested and 30 ha non-forested areas. Since the beginning of the 2001 fire season a total of 15,421 fires affected 324,576 ha forested and 131,623 ha nonforested land. Highest fire activity on 19 August occurred in Krasnoyarski Krai: 8 fires burning 7 ha
(SOURCE: A.Eritsov, Science and Technology Department of Avialesookhrana )

Eurasian Experimental Fire Weather Information System
The system has been developed by forest fire researchers from Canada, Russia and Germany is displayed on this website starting 18 July 2001. Complete information and a set of daily fire weather and fire behaviour potential maps covering Eurasia (the Baltic Region, Eastern Europe, countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Mongolia) can be accessed at:
http://www.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/fwf/eurasia.htm

Figure 1. Example of the Eurasian Experimental Fire Weather Information System:
The Experimental Fire Weather Index (FWI) for Russia and neighbouring countries, 23 August 2001.

Daily Fire Occurrence and Fire Danger Maps of the Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk
Selected fire occurrence maps, satellite images and a forest fire danger map are prepared daily by the Russian GFMC correspondent Dr. Anatoly Sukhinin, Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk, in collaboration with the Emergency Situation Monitoring and Forecasting Agency, Krasnoyarsk branch. The maps are produced on the base of satellite data (classification by the NOAA AVHRR). They show the fire locations (by latitude and longitude) and the area affected by fire (red signature, size in ha). The red arrow at each fire location points to the nearest populated place. The terms Oblast or Krai used in the maps are designations of administrative regions. A map showing the boundaries ofadministrative regions and a legend is included below.

Map legend

Administrative boundaries

23 August 2001:

Overview map showing large fire locations covering the10-days period 13 to 23 August 2001:

Overview

Republic of Yakutia Republic of Yakutia Republic of Yakutia

Republic of Yakutia Republic of Yakutia Irkutskaia Oblast

Irkutskaia Oblast

For more background information on the Russian Federation see: Recent Media Highlights on Fire, Policies, and Politics ,especially variousreports of news agencies, 28-30 July 2001:
Forest firethreatens Russian nuclear sites 

For more details on fire in the Russian Federation, Mongolia and China: 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.