AFE at ForestSAT 2024

AFE Fire Session

The session led by the AFE Group will discuss remote sensing techniques and data analysis, concerning fire modeling, offering crucial insights into forest management, biomass validation, and fire prediction. It will focus on identifying and monitoring burned areas in planted forests and plantations, examining both natural and human-driven causes of forest fires.

The session will also analyze current trends, review past fire events, and forecast potential future hotspots under climate change by remote sensing and fire monitoring usage. It will also assess the impact of fires on essential forest ecosystem services, contributing to advancing forest spatial analysis technologies.

AFE Session conveners:

Florian Kraxner, AFE Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar, IIASA

Woo-Kyun Lee, Professor, Division of Environmental Science and Ecological Engineering, Korea University (KU)

Richard T. Yao, Senior Research Economist, Scion

Shana Gross, Fire Ecologist, Scion

IIASA Senior Researcher, Dmitry Shchepashchenko will chair the fire session and – together with Hyun-Woo Jo, Postdoctoral Fellow at IIASA and Korea University – will represent the AFE Group. Dmitry will provide two insightful presentations, and Hyun-Woo Jo will provide another invited talk.

Dmitry Shchepashchenko will present "Identifying the Drivers of Biomass Change in European Forests: Insights from Remote Sensing and Geo-Wiki Analysis" on data utilization from the European Space Agency's Climate Change Initiative (ESA CCI) Biomass project. This presentation will reveal how remote sensing and Geo-Wiki analysis can give insight into the factors driving biomass changes in European forests, including forest management practices and natural disturbances.

Dmitry Shchepashchenko's second presentation, "Data. GEO-TREES - A Global Harmonized In-Situ Data Repository for Forest Biomass Maps Validation", introduces the GEO-TREES initiative, an international cooperation with leading ecological research teams and networks that manage permanent forest plots. The GEO-TREES database integrates remote sensing and ground-based data to enhance the accuracy of forest biomass measurements, bridging the gap between satellite observations and field-based research.

Hyun-Woo Jo will present "Application of Hybrid Forest Fire Modelling (FLAM-Net) in South Korea's Planted and Managed Forests" and introduce the FLAM-Net. This neural network that merges process-based insights from the IIASA's Wildfire Climate Impacts and Adaptation Model (FLAM) with machine learning capabilities. Specifically tailored for South Korea, FLAM-Net and DN-FLAM algorithms offer advanced predictions of forest fire patterns, revealing high spatial and temporal precision.

The AFE fire session will also host the Korea University Forest Fire Unit's researchers - Minwoo Roh, Sunwoo Kim, and Uichan Kim, focusing on forest fires and other forest catastrophes. They will present "Developing a Forest Fire Diagnostic Model Utilizing Satellite Imagery" to highlight a forest fire diagnostic model. The model integrates remote sensing data with human activity maps to improve forest fire prediction accuracy. The presentation will demonstrate its real-world performance with forest fire occurrence data from South Korea.