Detection of Spread Fire at the Mesoregion of Paraíba Backwoods’

Abstract

The spread fire is an early agricultural technique widely used in Brazil; such technique causes serious harm to environment as well as damage to human health. Knowledge of spread fire cause and their localization is important for taking preventive measures. In Brazil, the National Institute of Spatial Research (INPE) manages the spread fire by detecting heat spots. The objective of this research was to identify the main heat spots over the mesoregion of Paraíba backwoods’ at the year of 2014. It was used heat spots’ data captured by the MODIS sensor, which is onboard of the AQUA_M-T satellite. It was registered heat spots in 56 of 83 cities inside the backwoods’ mesoregion, summing up to 304 heat spots. The occurrence of spread fire huddled mainly between July and December, months of drought in the studied area, therefore, it was concluded that the phenomenon is a product of the climate features which act simultaneously together with human deed related mainly to agriculture, where the fire is used by farmers as a tool for handling animal husbandry