Early warning for grassland fire danger in north China using remote sensing

Grassland fires do a lot of economic and environmental damages and even raise forest fires, which causes more losses. Grasslands in north China mainly distribute in arid and semi-arid areas, fires happened frequently there. Grassland fires can be largely eliminated by early warning technology. This paper presents a multifactor Grassland Fire Danger Index (GFDI) of north China, which provides early warning for grassland fire occurrence and behavior. The GFDI was developed using remotely sensed images and weather station data. Seven basic indicators, relative humidity, temperature, wind velocity, precipitation, degree of grassland curing, fuel weight and grassland continuity were selected to calculate the GFDI. According to its value, GFDI was classified to 5 levels: low, moderate, high, very high and extreme.