Use of AVHRR Data for the Study of Vegetation Fires in Africa: Fire Management Perspectives

Environmentally, the direct and indirect effect of the increasing anthropogenic pressure on tropical ecosystems are often related to fire. However, fire can be seen in a dual perspective clearly summed up by Wein (1991) in the first issue of the International Journal of Wildland Fire: “Fire is viewed in some instances as the most globally destructive tool used by industrial societies. Yet for many purposes fire is the most environmentally safe, economically sound, and socially acceptable tool that can be used to achieve wildland goals”. National and international agencies are more and more convinced that a policy of fire suppression is surely not a sustainable solution in a socio-economic perspective and that it could have negative drawbacks on conservation policies. In such a conflictual context, emphasis should be put on the management of man-made fires and their use in development policies. Still, reliable information on fire dynamics are lacking at local, continental and global scales. Remote sensing technology can contribute to the documentation of this key element in the human-environment interactions. Among the remote sensing tools actually available, the NOAA-AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) system, although originally designed for meteorological applications, has proved to be very efficient for the detection and monitoring of vegetation fires.