|
Annual Burnt Areas
Before 1984 only estimations were made for the amount of
forested area burnt by fire. Macleod (1971) estimated
that the annual forested area burnt was about 18,772,000
hectares and such evidences were mostly occurred in the
North and Northeast of the country.
In 1985 the first aerial survey for area burnt by fire
was conducted throughout the country. The figures
revealed that 3.5 million hectares of forest (including
grass and bush lands) were burnt. This figure is
equivalent to 21% of the total forested areas. The
problem is concentrated in the northern region where the
largest forested area exists.
Other aerial surveys were conducted in 1986, 1992-1998,
thereafter the survey has been conducted by satellite
imageries.The results were shown in Table 5.
Table 5. Annual burnt areas caused
by forest fire.
|
Year |
Area burnt by forest fire (ha.) |
|
1985 |
3,535,110 |
|
1986 |
3,797,289 |
|
1992 |
2,030,160 |
|
1993 |
1,459,617 |
|
1994 |
763,648 |
|
1995 |
643,799 |
|
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002 |
490,303
660,208
1,145,452
293,480
93,324
76,189
139,389 |
Figure 3. Annual burnt areas (hectares).
Table 6. Burnt areas by region (Data
average from 1997-2003)
|
Region |
Northeast |
North |
Central |
South |
|
Percentage of fires (%) |
31.0 |
29.9 |
29.8 |
9.3 |
Number of fire
Data on number of fire was derived on ground suppression
operation by
64 fire stations throughout the country. The average
number of fire during 1998-2003 are 9,241 fires/year
Table 7. Number of fires per year.
|
Year |
No. of fires |
|
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003 |
7,909
7,800
9,758
10,084
11,974
7,924 |
|
Average |
9,241.5 |
[Type and Duration]
[Causes][Annual
burnt areas][Fire
Impacts]
|
