The objectives were to present and promote the use of new data, products and tools for the detection and operational monitoring of vegetation of wildfires and forest fires from satellite images of both active fire and burned surfaces. At the occasion, the programs for monitoring of burnings / forest fires in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, ACTO Member Countries were presented.
The activities of the ACTO Monitoring Project, which promotes training courses on “Monitoring of Forest Fires” by satellite since 2014, were also highlighted. The Project reported on the opportunities for regional cooperation identified at the 1st Seminar on Forest Fires held in Cusco, Peru, 2015. In these opportunities were complemented and discussed taking into account the possibilities of implementation.
The work carried out by the Project Observation Rooms for the monitoring of heat spots and scars of forest fires and burns was also presented. The activities allow the monitoring of the process the occurrence of heat sources, providing information on the surfaces affected by the fire and that could be used in the elaboration of forest fire maps for certain regions. The result of the work of the Observation Room helps the process of inter-institutional coordination at the national level, as well as the development of a methodology for the generation of prior fire alerts and the monitoring of wildfire areas.
A videoconference was also held through the work carried out by ACTO and the Global Forest Resources Assessment Program of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), which presented the strategy on fire management: the work is done now and the results are produced.
The “Regional Seminar on Forest Fires in the Amazon Region” also included practical exercises on the platform of TERRAMA2 developed by Forest Fire Program of the INPE São José dos Campos and used for the forest fire monitoring. The objective is to facilitate and promote actions aimed at the preservation, protection, conservation and sustainable use of the forest, biodiversity and water resources of the Amazon.
