Earth Observation & Modelling Agri-Tech to Understand Chinese Agricultural & Forest Fires in Relation to Management Practice & Climate Drivers.
(Funder STFC; £58k; July 2015 – March 2016)
China remains a largely rural country in terms of land use, with agriculture and forests as two key land cover types covering enormous areas. Fire is also ubiquitous throughout much of China. This project focuses on the two principal types of rural landscape, and two types of landscape scale burning, that occur widely throughout parts of China (i) agricultural fires that burn in crop growing regions and which occur annually over very large areas, lit purposely to remove material from the land prior to harvest (albeit the practice is actually discouraged by the Chinese Government), and (ii) forest fires that occur in any one location very much less frequently than agricultural fires, but which can have significant impact on both forest ecology and forest resources, and which are generally also caused by human activities but now primarily by accidental or inappropriate ignitions, or by fires spreading into forest from neighbouring agricultural lands.
The project aims at further enhancing the use of Earth Observation, Remote Sensing and Simulation modelling in this area of Agri-Tech research and application, whilst also addressing ‘real-world’ issues in relation to Chinese agricultural, landuse and forestry practices.
SEI York staff: Lisa Emberson (PI); Harry Vallack, Chris Malley, Jon Ensor
Partners: Kings College London, Forest Research, University of Aberdeen, Swansea University, Kunming Institute of Botany,