The incidence of forest fires in Russia now stands at more than 30 thousand a year. These fires affect areas of 2 to 3 min hectares and, in what experts call extreme cases, such as took place in 1999, for example, the size of the affected areas can be doubled. Atmospheric pollution with aerosols resulting from forest fires is commensurate with those caused by volcanic activities; in fact, the mass of the annually incinerated organic matter is steadily approaching the one-billion-tons mark, which will soon be attained if experts fail to work out a strategy and tactics of crisis management in the nearest future. The problem of forest fires is now on an international cooperation agenda, with Russia being represented by the Institute of Forestry named after Vladimir Sukachev (the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk). The Institute has been dealing with the problem of forest fires since 1958. A decade later Dr. Nikolai Kurbatkin, who set up the laboratory of forest pyrology and started the Siberian school of research in this field, turned for support and assistance to the Institute of Chemical Kinetics of Combustion (the Siberian Branch of RAS, Novosibirsk). It sent a team of young researchers who focused on the mechanisms of physical and chemical processes occurring during the combustion of plant and vegetable matter in labs and at test sites. Practical studies of forest fires, however, require effective remote sensing methods and equipment. Researchers working in this field had to design and build sets of instruments and equipment for early forest fires detection, including TV cameras, spectrometers and radiometers mounted on aircraft. The first flying lab like that was set up in 1974 on board an AN-2 aircraft and was later modified and improved to be mounted on board bigger IL-14 planes. Its new version, carried by an AN-30 plane, was launched in 1984 and featured not only remote sensing equipment, but also a minicomputer for data collec ... Читать далее