IIT Delhi to develop models to forecast forest fire incidents by 2020
DEHRADUN: A study aimed at forecasting incidents of forest fires across the country in a subseasonal manner, by focusing on the impact of climate change is currently being undertaken by researchers of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
“We want to see how much climate change contributes to susceptibility of forest fires,” said Somnath Baidya Roy, associate professor with the Centre of Atmospheric Sciences (CAS), IIT Delhi, who is leading the study.
Roy said the study will also take into account anthropogenic factors or fuel built up in the forest (like dry leaves or logs) which act as trigger in spreading of forest fire apart from factors such as humidity and wind speed.
The study started in 2018 is expected to come up with forest fire models for predictions by the end of 2020.
A high resolution data set that can help to forecast forest fires on a national level will be created at the end of the research.
The data set will be generated through a process called dynamical downscale.
“The goal is to use this data for developing forest fire models which in turn will be used to calculate the chances of a certain area catching fire and the extent of damage.
“This will help state forest departments to use their resources in a much more efficient manner,” said Roy.
Anasuya Barik, research scholar with CAS IIT Delhi, spoke about the research at the Forest Survey of India in Dehradun on Tuesday, as part of a two-day workshop on ‘Forest Fire Monitoring and Damage Assessment’.
She said so far in the study, a co-relation has been noticed between years when the country faced a drought and the number of forest fire incidents reported by the Forest Survey of India between 1987 and 2016. The years with maximum forest fire incidents in this case were identified to be 2004, 2009, 2012 and 2016.
“Our study will give vulnerability scenarios along with a daily data base on days when the temperature and relative humidity thresholds are crossing beyond the ideal situation leading to forest fires,” added Barik.