| The adverse impact of uncontrolled forest fire on the ecology and environment is well known. Over hundreds of years forest fire has been viewed by many as an environmental horror. Forest fires occur either because of anthropological or natural causes. Growing population, escalating exploitation of natural resources, erratic rainfall, and extensive dry spells during winters, early summers and decrease in annual rainfall in recent past due to climate change has increased incidence of forest fires in the world. Fire has been linked with reduced soil fertility, destruction of biodiversity, global warming and damage to forests, land resources and of course human assets. The majority of fires around the globe are caused by human activity. Lightning is probably the most common natural cause of fire. It has been estimated that annually fires burn across up to 500 million hectares of woodland, open forests, tropical and sub-tropical savannahs, 10-15 million hectares of boreal and temperate forest and 20-40 million hectares of tropical forests. To manage the sustainability of forest areas, reliable data on forest fire are necessary but the global forest fire data especially in Indian context is crude estimate and insufficient. In this situation remote sensing and GIS techniques can be a big aid to acquire reliable data on forest fire resulting in vulnerability analysis of forest area prone to forest fire. |