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In
August 1999, I boarded a 2-hour commercial flight in
western Brazil. The plane was on its final approach
for a landing in Cuiabá when I noticed that the
river below seemed out of place. Then the runway passed
by a half-mile (0.8 km) to the south. The captain aborted
the landing, with profuse apologies, and finally set
us down 2 hours away in Pôrto Velho.
The
problem was not unexpected. Cuiabá is downwind
from a large tract of deforestation, and the regional
smoke pall from wildland fires that day extended hundreds
of miles across western Brazil. The view from the air
was like looking into a ping-pong ball. But I'm used
to that; my job is to help the Brazilian Government
monitor the fires and their impacts, mainly by airborne
remote sensing.
My
work is part of a successful international program called
the Cooperation on Fire and Environmental Change in
Tropical Ecosystems. The USDA
Forest Service's partner in the program is the Brazilian
Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources
(IBAMA). Support also comes from the USDA
Foreign Agricultural Service, Research and Scientific
Exchange Division, and the U.S.
Agency for International Development.
At
the height of the fire season, there might be 20,000
fires per month across Amazonia and the adjacent tropical
savanna known as the Cerrado. Almost all the fires have
human causes, ranging from light pasture burning to
intense combustion in slashed tropical forest. The accumulated
smoke not only closes airports and disrupts commerce,
but also erodes human health and could threaten the
well-being of the tropical forest. Frequent or large-scale
burning also raises concerns for the highly biodiverse
tropical savanna. In addition, harvesting and burning
affect the global carbon balance and increase greenhouse
gas emissions.
The
Brazilian solution has focused on fire prevention, limited
fire suppression, and enforcement of strict laws governing
deforestation and fire use. The USDA Forest Service's
contribution has been to provide fire management training
and help develop the means to monitor fires and thereby
measure the effectiveness of Brazil's fire program.
With scientists and engineers from IBAMA, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research
Center, and Space Instruments, Inc., the USDA Forest
Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station has mounted
a series of airborne campaigns to monitor fire and selective
harvesting across Amazonia and the Cerrado.
In
addition, Brazilian and USDA Forest Service scientists,
led by Dr. Sam Sandberg from the Pacific Northwest Research
Station, have been busy on the ground conducting experimental
burns and collecting field data on the flammability
of fuels in savanna and tropical forest. The Brazilian
sites complete a transect of replicated studies reaching
from the boreal forests of Alaska to the temperate forests
of the Western United States and Mexico.
Our
work has yielded promising methods for measuring fire
intensity and fuel consumption based solely on remote
sensing. We have also developed low-cost remote sensing
systems for fire monitoring. The systems have applications
not only in Brazil, but also in the United States where
we are contributing to the National Fire Plan. Moreover,
our work gives us the chance to study the behavior of
fires that can burn for months-a rare opportunity in
the United States, where few fires are allowed to burn
freely. Such opportunities let us assess our fire behavior
models. The payoffs are mutual: Our work with Brazil
to solve fire problems in tropical ecosystems has improved
our ability to monitor and manage fire at home.
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