News from Fire Research: IGBP/IGAC: BIBEX Steering Commiteee Meeting (IFFN No. 19 – September 1998)

SAFARI-2000

SAFARI 2000 is an international regional science initiative being developed to explore, study and address linkages between land-atmosphere processes and the relationship of biogenic, pyrogenic or anthropogenic emissions and the consequences of their deposition to the functioning of the biogeophysical and biogeochemical systems of southern Africa. This initiative is being built around a number of on-going, already funded activities by NASA, the international community and African nations in the southern African region.

Much like its predecessor SAFARI-92, SAFARI-2000 is more a confederation of affiliated regional and global environmental change research efforts that have secured their own funding and are currently underway or will be underway soon within southern Africa, rather than a specific, funded program. SAFARI 2000 will include the following science components: terrestrial ecosystem and biogeochemical modeling; land cover and land use change mapping; monitoring and modeling; fire disturbance studies; quantification of biomass burning emissions and emissions transport modeling; aerosol characterization and monitoring; atmospheric chemistry; and modeling and atmospheric deposition experiments.

Satellite product validation will be undertaken in the science context of these components providing validated data products as input to the above studies.

SAFARI 2000 will be conducted over a three year period starting in 1999 with field campaigns during 1999 and 2000. A synthesis product of results available in early 2001. SAFARI 2000 will add scientific value by enabling the synthesis, coordination and beginning of budget closure between these different activities within the region that will ultimately provide a contribution to a regional science assessment of global change.

NASA, through its Research and Applications (R and A) Program, EOS instrument teams and EOS Validation activities, is supporting on-going research efforts within the southern African region. In addition to NASAs African scientific collaborators, scientists from South Africa are currently securing funds through their national science foundation to support their involvement. The international regional science networks developed through IGBP and START within the region will participate in the initiative and will be the mechanism for broader African scientific involvement.

The first of SAFARI-2000 science planning workshops was held in Blydepoort, South Africa (11-17 July 1998). Bob Swap reported about the priority research objectives elaborated by the workshop participants, all mainly devoted to understand the linkages between physical, chemical and biological processes. Contact: B.Swap rjs8g@virginia.edu.

Remote sensing programs

P.M.Barbosa reported about the state of the World Fire Web which is being built at present by the Joint Research Center (JRC). The Web will consist of a network of nodes which receive and interpret fire information derived from the NOAA AVHRR.

The Global Fire Product is another activity of the JRC. In 1991, following a workshop on the requirements for terrestrial biospheric data sets and in response to requirements from the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme (IGBP) core projects, IGBP-DIS set up the Fire Working Group (FWG) to develop a consensus algorithm for global fire mapping. From this was born the concept of a Global Fire Product (GFP). This would be based on the use of an active fire detection algorithm and the global daily Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) data being collected by the IGBP-DIS 1 km AVHRR Global Land Project. A consensus algorithm was developed and approved by the FWG in 1996. Data processing was initiated at the JRC in 1996, and completed in November 1997. (For more details: see contribution by Dwyer et al., this volume of IFFN.)

Y.Kaufmann reports on the state of MODIS. J.G.Goldammer reports on the state of progress of the fire sensors development by the DLR: the BIRD satellite and the FOCUS instrument (to be deployed on the International Space Station).

Fire information systems and inventories

J.G.Goldammer reports about the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) which is in its establishment phase between June and December 1998. The first phase will be tested at regional base in South East Asia, and it will be expanded gradually to global scale. The GFMC is located at the Fire Ecology and Biomass Burning Research Group of the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry, Germany, at Freiburg University Airport Campus. The GFMC is financed by the government of Germany as a contribution to the UN International Decade for Natural Hazard Reduction (IDNDR). Following the principles which were developed for a scientific Global Vegetation Fire Information System, the Global Fire Monitoring Center will integrate the archived and real-time information related to fire. This will include the interlinking with other national, regional and international information systems. It is expected that the GFMC will be on the Internet by September/October 1998 (see Editorial of this issue of IFFN). Starting with the July-1998 issue International Forest Fire News (which is the official newsletter for the fire research groups of IGAC/BIBEX, IBFRA, IUFRO and the IDNDR) will be posted on the GFMC internet site.

The Global Vegetation Fire Inventory (GVFI) will be a focus of the GFMC. GVFI also contributes to the biomass bunrning emission component of the Global Emissions Inventory Activity (GEIA). The Ninth International Workshop of GEIA was held at the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (USA) 19-20 August 1998, in tandem with the CACGP/IGAC Joint International Symposium on Global Atmospheric Chemistry. B.J.Stocks reported about the state of the Northern Hemisphere fire inventory. The GEIA website is http://blueskies.sprl.umich.edu/geia/.

Partnerships with end-users

The panel discussion of the joint CACGP/IGAC symposium focused on public policy. While more questions were asked at the panel discussion than answers were given, the BIBEX community could look back to a successful involvement with governments and international organizations. The South East Asian fire and smoke episode of 1997-98 required the inputs by the fire science community into activities of various UN agencies and programmes which responded to the fires, particularly the WMO, WHO, FAO, UNEP, and IDNDR. Details are found in the pages of IFFN starting with the January 1998 issue.

BIBEX Business: BIBEX Committee membership and chair

During the closed session of the BIBEX Steering Committee proposed changes to the list of committee members were discussed and agreed upon. Based on a request from the ICAC SSC, the terms of all current BIBEX Committee members were considered to have ended. Some members of the current committee indicated that they would like to terminate their involvement involvement. Four new members were nominated. The proposals for the new composition of the BIBEX Committee will be forwarded to the IGAC SSC for their approval.

M.O.Andreae who served as founding convener of BIBEX since 1990 stepped down. The BIBEX Steering Committee members expressed their gratitude for his engagement over the years.

The committee followed the suggestion of M.O.Andreae to nominate two co-conveners to lead the BIBEX activities into a new direction (nomination to be confirmed by the IGAC SSC). Under the impression that biomass burning emissions chemistry and related atmospheric chemistry processes have been successfully explored during the lifetime of BIBEX, it was agreed that the future emphasis of BIBEX should be in the field of fire inventories (including remote sensing of fires), fire ecology, and global fire modelling.

BIBEX contact:

Johann Georg Goldammer
Fire Ecology Research Group
Max Planck Institute for Chemistry
c/o Freiburg University
P.O.Box
D – 79085 Freiburg GERMANY

Fax: ++49-761-80 80 12
Tel: ++49-761-80 80 11
e-mail: fire@ruf.uni-freiburg.de

 

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IFFN No. 19