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FIRES IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (2001-2010)
D ATA F R O M S AT E L L I T E - B A S E D M O N I TO R I N G
Emil A. Cherrington Antonio H. Clemente Betzy E. Hernández Bessy C. García Marcelo O. Oyuela
Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America & the Caribbean (CATHALAC)111 City of Knowledge, Panama City, Panama TEL: (507) 317-3200 • [email protected]
May 2011
FIRES IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC (2001-2010)
D ATA F R O M S AT E L L I T E - B A S E D M O N I TO R I N G
4 Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
INTRODUCTIONThe Mesoamerican region stretching from southern Mexico to Panama is critical to global biodiversity conservation efforts. While the isthmus represents only 0.7% of earth’s landmass, by stark contrast, some 9.4% of the world’s terrestrial species are found there (Barry 2003, CI 2006). Hectare for hectare, the region is more bio-diverse than even Brazil, where 11.4% of earth’s terrestrial species are found on 5.7% of the world’s landmass (Lewinsohn & Prado 2005). Of concern is that Mesoamerica’s globally significant biological diversity is vulnerable to both natural disasters and human impacts. Year after year, hurricanes, tropical storms, floods, fires and drought ravage the region (Anderson et al 2008).
Recognizing that satellite-based technolo-gies can play a significant role in the moni-toring of environmental phenomena and response to natural disasters, the region’s governments requested the development of the Regional Visualization & Monitor-ing System (SERVIR), which was formally inaugurated on February 3, 2005 at the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America & the Caribbean (CATHALAC) in Panama. SERVIR is jointly implemented by CATHALAC, NASA, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),
and other partner institutions. SERVIR constitutes a platform for the observation, forecasting and modeling of environmental processes in Mesoamerica and the Domini-can Republic and provides information free-ly to the region’s decision-makers, scien-tists, and the general public via the Internet at www.servir.net.
Particularly important to regional environ-mental monitoring efforts is the influence of fire, which constitutes an especially signifi-cant threat to Mesoamerica’s biodiversity. In that context, SERVIR makes much use of the Rapid Response System developed for the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS), and the University of Maryland’s Fire Information for Manage-ment System (FIRMS). Flying some 705km above the earth on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, MODIS can detect fires and other ‘hotspots’1 such as gas flares and volcanic eruptions (Lillesand et al 2007, UMD 2007). MODIS takes snapshots of Mesoamerica about four times daily, allowing for detec-tion of fires occurring at set intervals, when these fires are not obscured by cloud cover or by thick smoke (UMD 2007). This study reviews the past decade’s worth of satel-lite-based fire data for Central America and the Dominican Republic.
1 For this reason, many times these are referred to “hotspots” in place of “fires” although the University of Maryland’s standard term is “active fire detections.”
5Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
METHODOLOGYFire data for the region, from the MODIS sensor, were obtained through the Univer-sity of Maryland’s Fire Information for Resource Management System, FIRMS (Davies et al 2009, NASA / UMD 2010). Prior to analysis, however, some filtering of the data was necessary. It should be noted that MODIS-Terra has effectively been collecting fire data since 2000, but its twin, MODIS-Aqua, did not become operational until in mid-2002 (Lillesand et al 2007). It was nonetheless useful to examine the entire decade’s worth of fire data. It should also be noted that the data sourced from FIRMS is a mix of data derived from two differing processing algorithms; these sets of data are referred to as MODIS Collections 4 and 5 (UMD 2007). To negate the likely errors of commission resultant from Collection 4, and to ensure a suitable degree of compatibility
between data derived from the two algo-rithms, only data with high estimated confi-dence values (at or exceeding 70%) have been selected for this analysis.
Through spatial analysis in powerful geographic information systems (GIS) appli-cations, fire detections can be combined with other data to trace detections, for instance, to which types of vegetative cover were burn-ing. Whether such detections were occurring within national parks and other protected areas can also be assessed. Important cave-ats to recall are that (i) fires detected by MODIS on any given day are mere subsets of the total fires occurring, representing only ‘snapshots’ of fires occurring throughout the day, and (ii) clouds or thick smoke occlude fire detections (UMD 2007).
6 Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
Table 1. Fires detected, by country2
YearCountry
TotalBZ CR DR GT HN NI PN SV
2001* 125 402 326 1,758 1,232 875 452 390 5,5602002* 36 222 90 1,025 267 382 259 216 2,4972003 858 624 528 10,907 5,614 3,470 1,168 491 23,6602004 188 649 599 3,661 1,453 2,389 1,444 873 11,2562005 421 314 885 7,787 3,841 2,683 418 461 16,8102006 140 207 511 2,750 1,756 1,450 647 364 7,8252007 474 367 642 6,271 2,089 1,218 700 421 12,1822008 408 327 706 4,734 2,012 1,639 762 271 10,8592009 341 360 462 6,775 2,768 2,043 1,223 401 14,3732010 345 433 517 4,674 1,551 1,900 439 352 10,211% 2.9% 3.4% 4.6% 43.7% 19.6% 15.7% 6.5% 3.7% 115,233
ISO country codes were utilized as follows: BZ = Belize, CR = Costa Rica, DR = Dominican Republic, GT = Guatemala, HN = Honduras, NI = Nicaragua, PN = Panama, SV = El Salvador
3 Agricultural land refers to both cultivated land and to pas-tures. Forests include lands with high tree cover of the broadleaf, needle-leaf or mixed varieties. Other land cover includes all other land cover types not which are not forest or agricultural land.
2 All the fire data presented in the tables were extracted from the MODIS Collection 4 / 5 data obtained from the University of Maryland / FIRMS. Data were filtered in a GIS environment, as described above.
The region’s three largest countries (Guate-mala, Honduras, Nicaragua) which account for about 62% of the region’s area (some 351,000 km² of the region’s 568,000 km²) account - disproportionately - for roughly 79% of these annually recurring fires. For instance, where Guatemala makes up just over 19% of the region’s land mass, it gener-ates almost 44% of the fires. In contrast,
Costa Rica represents 9% of the region’s land mass, but generated only 3.4% of the fires. Panama represents 13.2% of the region’s territory, but has likewise contributed only 3.7% of the region’s fires. The statistics on which land cover types have been impacted by fires are even more illustrative (Table 2).
Table 2. Fires detected, by land cover type3
YearLand cover type
TotalForest Cropland Other
2001* 1,174 21.1% 3,720 66.9% 666 12.0% 5,5602002* 379 15.2% 1,792 71.8% 326 13.1% 2,4972003 8,798 37.2% 11,340 47.9% 3,522 14.9% 23,6602004 2,589 23.0% 7,348 65.3% 1,319 11.7% 11,2562005 6,511 38.7% 7,327 43.6% 2,972 17.7% 16,8102006 2,357 30.1% 4,554 58.2% 914 11.7% 7,8252007 4,283 35.2% 5,904 48.5% 1,995 16.4% 12,1822008 3,739 34.4% 5,325 49.0% 1,795 16.5% 10,8592009 4,943 34.4% 7,306 50.8% 2,124 14.8% 14,3732010 3,064 30.0% 5,238 51.3% 1,909 18.7% 10,211
Total / % 37,837 32.8% 59,854 51.9% 17,542 15.2% 115,233
RESULTSOver the past decade, the MODIS sensors detected over 100,000 fires across Central Amer-ica and the Dominican Republic (Davies et al 2009, NASA / UMD 2010), as illustrated in Table 1.
7Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
Figure 1. Fires across Central America and the Dominican Republic in peak year of 2003
For the sake of differentiating the various land cover / vegetation types upon which such fires occur, these are stratified by land cover type in Table 2, above. The data indi-cate that over time, the overall incidence of detected fires is fluctuating, as is the inci-dence of agricultural fires and forest fires. In any event, in any given year, agricultur-al fires make up about half of fires detect-ed, while forest fires have generally been upwards of 30% of fires detected. Over the ten years, fires on other types of land cover made up, on average about 15% of fires detected. These were likely savannah and shrubland fires. The data also indicate that 2003 had the worst fire season, with an esti-mated 23,660 fires detected (see Figure 1). According to the Climate Prediction Center of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration (NOAA CPC 2011), the 2003 fire season occurred during an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event which had started the previous year. Accord-ing to a 2005 United Nations Environment Programme report (UNEP/GRID Arendal 2005), ENSO events are known to cause drought conditions on Central America’s Pacific coast, which could have contributed to a dryer than normal fire season. Forest fires also peaked in 2003, comprising over 37% of all fires detected. The year 2005 was the second worst fire season, with almost 17,000 fires detected. While 2001 and 2002 appear to have been mild, it should be noted that the dual Aqua and Terra satellite plat-forms were not working until late 2002, so the lack of fires may be due to less imaging.
8 Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
In addition to being able to study the number of agricultural and forest fires, the satellite data also permits study of the relationship between agricultural fires and forest fires. Table 3 below, for instance, represents cases of forest fires occurring within 1km of the agricultural frontier.
Table 3. Number and proportion of forest fires near the agricultural frontier
Year Number % of Forest Fires
2001* 430 36.6%2002* 160 42.2%2003 2,899 33.0%2004 965 37.3%2005 1,909 29.3%2006 804 34.1%2007 1,293 30.2%2008 1,049 28.1%2009 1,559 31.5%2010 967 31.6%
Total / % 12,035 31.8%
What the data indicate are that a rather large proportion of forest fires occur near agricul-tural lands. On average, a third of forest fires occur near agricultural lands. This would seem to indicate that either (a) agricultural fires are escaping into nearby forests, or (b) farmers are increasingly clearing forest land for expansion of their farms. Meerman & Sabido (2001)’s review of the role of fire on Belize’s ecosystems, for instance, indi-cated that the former occurrence was rather common.
Another salient perspective is examining how protected areas are impacted by the region’s fires. Table 4 above presents that assessment. It can be seen, for instance, that over the past decade, fires in protected
areas represented on average almost 90% of detected forest fires. That figure has fluctu-ated from year to year. In 2001, for instance, protected area fires represented around two-thirds of forest fires, but in 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2010, fires in protected areas represent-ed more than 90% of forest fires. As a cave-at, it can also not be overemphasized that the number of fires reported for 2001 and 2002 were less than other years as there was only one satellite sensor (MODIS-Terra) detecting fires in those years as compared to 2003 onwards when both MODIS sensors (MODIS-Aqua and MODIS-Terra) were operating in conjunction. It should neverthe-less go without saying that the lands within protected areas should not be burning, and the data from Table 4 can be interpreted as saying that most of the forest fires actually occur within the bounds of lands legally set aside for conservation purposes. In the light of those statistics, the logical conclusion is that protected areas across Central Amer-ica and the Dominican Republic are under substantial pressure.
Table 4: Number and proportion of forest fires within protected areas
Year Number % of Forest Fires
2001* 767 65.3%2002* 310 81.8%2003 7,579 86.1%2004 1,841 71.1%2005 6,623 101.7% 4
2006 1,635 69.4%2007 4,094 95.6%2008 3,261 87.2%2009 4,564 92.3%2010 2,898 94.6%
Total / %4 33,572 88.7%
4 This is likely caused by the fact that not all protected areas are 100% forest, but often times rep-resent other ecosystems. Hence, in 2005, the number of fires in protected areas actually exceeded the number of forest fires.
9Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
CONCLUSIONS
Satellite-based fire detection data from NASA’s MODIS sensors indicate that in the past decade, the incidence of fires across Central America and the Dominican Repub-lic has varied from year to year, but has culminated in over 100,000 fires detected between 2001 and 2010. It should likewise be noted that because of the technical limi-tations of the satellite systems, the fires detected by MODIS represent a fraction of the fires that occurred. Nonetheless, for a relatively small region possessing signifi-cant forest resources and associated biodi-versity, the relatively significant proportion of forest fires (32.8%) and the high propor-tion of forest fires within protected areas (88.7%) should be a cause for concern. Fires have been detected in recent years in many of the region’s protected areas, and this should draw the attention of land manag-ers. In addition to examining the impact of fires in forests near agricultural lands, future analyses should also consider the potential impacts of roads on forest fires.
It is nonetheless promising that there exist platforms for the remote monitoring of forest fires and other types of environmen-tal disasters. These include the collabora-tions between FIRMS, the MODIS Rapid Response System and SERVIR. The region’s Ministries of the Environment have been and continue to be important stakehold-ers in the implementation of SERVIR, and this report serves to provide a summary and interpretation of both regional and national fire trends. It is thus hoped that institutions in the Region will further take advantage ofthe simple and user-friendly satellite-based tools that are now available for monitor-ing of the environment – tools which were unavailable only a few years ago prior to the establishment of the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System, SERVIR.5 These tools provide the perspective of an ‘eye in the sky’ on the environment that would otherwise be unavailable.
5 For more information on SERVIR, please visit www.servir.net or contact [email protected].
10 Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSin this study. CATHALAC Director Emilio Sempris, NASA Earth Science Division Director Michael Freilich, NASA Program Scientist for Biological Diversity and Program Manager for Ecological Forecast-ing Woody Turner, NASA SERVIR Project Director Daniel Irwin, and NASA SERVIR International Programs Director Gwendolyn Artis must also be acknowledged for their support, as should Eric Anderson and Africa Flores of the University of Alabama-Hunts-ville, the latter of whom provided extensive review of this document. Victor Hugo Ramos of Guatemala’s CONAP must likewise be acknowledged for his fire assessments of the Petén which inspired this report.
This work was supported under NASA Contract No. NNM07AB02C with CATHALAC, through the generous support of the U.S. Agency for International Devel-opment (USAID). The earlier 2008 edition of this report was originally supported by USAID through Cooperative Agreement No. 596-A-00-06-00099-00 with CATHALAC. In particular, Carrie Stokes, Orlando Altami-rano, Ruben Aleman, and Michelle Jennings of USAID must be acknowledged. Sincere thanks are also extended to Diane Davies, the Principal Investigator of FIRMS at the University of Maryland and Minnie Wong of the University of Maryland for provid-ing the archived fire detection data utilized
11Fires in Central America and the DR (2001-2010)
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