Long-term Assessment of Fire Regime Across Different Forest Types

Worldwide, fire plays a crucial role in ecosystem patterns and processes. The fire regime varies across the biomes, and different ecosystems respond differently. Alteration in the fire regime affects the ecosystem negatively. In the absence of historical records, long-term fire studies are essential to understand the fire regime on a regional scale. Fires inside the wilderness area of Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR) occur as a result of anthropogenic artefacts. Twenty-five years of fire frequency study from satellite remote sensing revealed that fire is prominent in the dry deciduous and open grassy systems. However, active fire suppression policies in recent times have shown their effectiveness in controlling fire in forested areas. Remote sensing-based fire studies must be integrated with field-based quantification of fire regimes and various other effects to get more ecological insights.