Quantifying forest fires and fire understory to understand climate-fire-forest composition interaction

Drivers of forest degradation are associated with climate change: globally increase in forest fires is associated with climate; Lantana infestation occurs in certain climates after forest has been disturbed.

Within this, some of the driver data is not readily available, such as Lantana infestation, forest fires at 30-m resolution and forest understory. Further, given that the data is mostly secondary, we do not have primary on-field data collection to validate our results.

This project, therefore, aims to develop new products and methods to study forest fires, lantana infestation, and forest understory and test positive feedback mechanisms between forest fires, climate change, and forest composition.