Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Forest Fires: v. 2(No. 137 WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment)

As in the past, future forest fire scenarios are impacted by climatic trends and changes in climatic extremes, as well as by anthropic pressure. It is to be expected that future trends, especially in the Mediterranean regions, will certainly lead to an increasing impact of human pressure on the natural environment, due to increases in tourism and to the enlargement of urban residential areas invading the countryside. Forecasting the effects of both factors (climatic and anthropic) and separating their effects on forest fires frequencies may be particularly difficult, but is essential to improve our knowledge of forest fire occurrence probability and to better organize prevention and fighting activities. At the same time, estimation of the possible increase of fire risk over coming years is important, taking into account also the diverse fire prone environments present in the Mediterranean as well as many other areas (mountain slopes, coastal zones, large islands, etc). This book contains peer-reviewed papers presented at the Second International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Forest Fires held in Kos, Greece, in 2010.The papers covered important topics in the field of prevention and fighting of forest fires, including: Computational Methods and Experiments; Air Quality and Health Risk Models; Detection, Monitoring and Response Systems; Decision Support Systems; Resource Optimization; Risk Assessment and Vulnerability Assessment.

Table of Contents:
Section 1: Computational methods and experiments Correlation analysis and fuel moisture estimation based on FMA and FMA+ fire danger indices in a Pinus elliottii plantation in southern Brazil; Correlations between heat release rate and gaseous by-product concentrations applied to the characterization of forest fuels; A comparative study of two alternative wildfire models, with applications to WSN topology control; Diffusion limited propagation of burning fronts; Statistical parameter estimation for a cellular automata wildfire model based on satellite observations Section 2: Air quality and health risk models Numerical modelling of 2003 summer forest fire impacts on air quality over Portugal; Monitoring fire-fighters' smoke exposure and related health effects during Gestosa experimental fires Section 3: Detection, monitoring and response systems An integrated approach for early forest fire detection and verification using optical smoke, gas and microwave sensors; Assessing burn severity using satellite time series; Real time fire front monitoring through smoke with bi-spectral infrared imaging; Forestwatch(R) wildfire smoke detection system: lessons learned from its two-year operational trial; Semi-expendable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for forest fire suppression; Meteorological condition and numerical simulation of the atmospheric transport of pollution emitted by vegetation fires Section 4: Decision support systems SIRIO high performance decision support system for wildfire fighting in alpine regions: an integrated system for risk forecasting and monitoring; Innovative image geo-referencing tool for decision support in wildfire fighting Section 5: Resources optimization Allocation of initial attack resources; Optimal timing of wildfire prevention education; Comparing environmental values across major U.S. national parks Section 6: Risk and vulnerability assessment A volatile organic compounds flammability approach for accelerating forest fires; Forest fires, risk and control; Spatial distribution of human-caused forest fires in Galicia (NW Spain); Evaluation of the FCCS crown fire potential equations in Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) stands in Greece