MAP-Fire Platform: a fire monitoring platform for MAP region

Natural fires in the Amazon are rare. Nonetheless, in the last two decades, there has been an increase in the occurrence of wildfires, associated with major droughts and changes in the landscape, such as the increase in forest borders, road development, deforestation and management of pastures and secondary vegetation. These wildfires impacts negatively the forest structure and dynamics, contributing to the increase in CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Moreover, it also impacts the local population directly, through the damage of agricultural products, timber and non-timber forest products and indirectly, by the increase of aerosols leading to respiratory diseases. In order to mitigate the occurrence of wildfires, it is necessary to identify areas where fires are occurring, what is burning and how to reach or communicate the risk, locally. This set of information is useful for defining priority areas, planning on the ground actions by the response team and ultimately, for law enforcement. In this context, we developed an on-line Platform to support planning and decision making by local stakeholders in the tri-national frontier of Madre de Dios (Peru), Acre (Brazil) and Pando (Bolivia), known as MAP region, where fires are a major problem. In the MAP-Fire Platform, we integrate spatial information, such as fire pixels, with land tenure (private properties, conservation areas), mobility information (roads and rivers), and the location of schools and health structures, which according to the Sendai Framework, should be safe areas. Since Amazonian populations depend on the use of fire, the development of this tool will support both the identification of short-term and long-term priority areas for response and mitigation actions to decrease the fire negative impacts.