What is it about?
Fire is a major disturbance in the tropical dry forests of western Madagascar. This research quantifies the amount of dry forest lost to a large escaped fire in 2013 in Kirindy Mitea National Park using satellite imagery analysis.
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Why is it important?
The mapping of fire in tropical dry forest lags behind research in fire mapping of tropical rain forests and temperate forests. Furthermore, losses of forest on this scale are major disturbances in intact tropical dry forests in Madagascar. The loss of tropical dry forest at Kirindy Mitea National Park has implications for the unique biodiversity of this region. A host of lemur species, fosa, baobabs, unique plants, birds, tenrecs, and reptiles occupy these forests and most of these species are found only in Madagascar.
Perspectives
Analysis of tropical dry forests using satellite imagery is incredibly challenging due to seasonality and variation of forest form; yet this biome is incredibly diverse and is important for wildlife and humans alike. I hope research on tropical dry forest analysis increases so that we may improve our maps, and thus understanding, of this unique forest type.
Dr Anne C Axel
Marshall University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Burned Area Mapping of an Escaped Fire into Tropical Dry Forest in Western Madagascar Using Multi-Season Landsat OLI Data, Remote Sensing, February 2018, MDPI AG,
DOI: 10.3390/rs10030371.
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