Message-ID: <199702131028.NAA11123@relay1.impsat1.com> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:28:07 +0300 From: Andres Ferreyra <mailto:aferreyra@IMPSAT1.COM.AR> Subject: Wildfire To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Greetings to all. I'm an Electronic Engineer and Agrometeorologist-in-the-making living in Cordoba, Argentina. I mostly do satellite-related work with wildfire, like fire detection with weather satellites, and fire-risk evaluation with vegetation indices, weather station data, etc. in CEPROCOR, a provincial government research institute. It is quite a challenge to do this kind of thing in a country where money for environmental work is difficult to come across!The inmense majority of wildfires here are apparently caused by man. Small farmers, under increasing taxation and general degradation of their business conditions, resort to fire as a land-clearing tool in order to expand their agricultural frontiers (consider predominant vegetation to be semiarid shrubland).
I would like to hear about the DEVEL-L listmembers' experience in other countries - where is fire also used extensively as an agricultural tool? Are there any programs dealing with the issue? Please let me know the coordinates of such programs.
Thanks in advance!
Best Regards,
Andres