Sixteen years of wildfires in Asia-Pacific
Wild land fires and other biomass fires annually burn a total land area of between 3.5 and 4.5 million km2, equivalent to the surface area of India and Pakistan together, or more than half of Australia. This makes it one of the most spatially prevalent hazards after drought.
Emissions from biomass burning inject pollutants into the atmosphere, as well as greenhouse gases (GHG). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attributes 17.3% of total anthropogenic emissions to biomass burning, making it the second largest source of GHG from human activities after the burning of fossil fuel.
This dataset includes an average of fires density over the period 1997-2010. It is based on the modified algorithm 1 product of World Fire Atlas dataset. The data was compiled monthly. The unit is expected average number of event per 0.1 decimal degree.
This product was designed by UNEP/GRID Europe for the Global Assessment Report on Risk Reduction (GAR). It was modeled using global data.
Credit: GIS processing UNEP/GRID Europe. http://preview.grid.unep.ch;
World Fire atlas (ESA-ESRIN), GIS processing UNEP/GRID-Europe.