Shillong, June 19: If villagers in Meghalaya see a fire, don’t panic and just report it from your phone.

This is important as around 49% of total forest cover in the State is highly prone to forest fire. The figures are higher than the national estimates of 10% by the Forest Survey of India.

A fire-prone analysis in Meghalaya reveals that Ri Bhoi district has the maximum area under extreme fire i.e. 50% (1,068.72 sqkm) of the total forest cover of the district. Among the Blocks, Rongjeng Block in East Garo Hills district has been found to have 74.3% of forest cover under very high fire-prone. West Khasi Hills district has the highest burnt area (more than 100 km2) throughout all the years. Mawshynrut in West Khasi Hills district is the most affected Block in the State having the highest burnt area.

Forest fire is one of the major threats to the rich floral and faunal wealth of the State. Large tracts of forests are burnt every year due to forest fires. The Meghalaya Forest Fire Information System (MeFFIS) dashboard has been developed as a single-point source of information for the decision-makers to monitor and assess the real-time and past forest fires in the entire Meghalaya.

Chief Minister Conrad Sangma noted that around 36 per cent of forest areas are highly vulnerable to fires, with 60 per cent being moderate to very high, underscoring the need for such data to guide effective forest fire management.

The application can be downloaded from the Google Play store by any individual to upload forest fire-related information in Meghalaya. The fire information can be uploaded by individuals in either English or any of the local languages such as Garo, Khasi and Jaintia spoken in Meghalaya. The App has the facility to capture photos of forest fire incidents taking place anywhere in Meghalaya and upload various attributes of the fire such as nature of fire, jhum fire or non-jhum fire, whether the area has burnt for the first time or experience repeated forest fire, whether it is occurring in bamboo forest or plantation or any other area.

The app has a facility to upload the type of forest through a dropdown menu. The App has also the facility to upload other information such as place of occurrence, and calculation of approx. area affected by fire through traversing the burnt area, duration of burning and time of occurrence. The App has the facility to upload the information both online as well as offline mode.

The System has been developed by using the satellite-based forest fire incidents data available from the Forest Survey of India (FSI) Dehradun. The dashboard has the facility to observe forest fire incidents in various administrative and forest management units, protected areas, eco-sensitive zones, districts, blocks, or at the village level by selecting the desired area during any period of interest.

The map depicts the inherent susceptibility of an area to experience fire. The map has been derived by using 7 parameters namely; forest type, forest density, elevation, slope, aspect that is the direction of slope, proximity to habitations, and proximity to roads. The map is classified from very low to very high vulnerability categories.

The dashboard also contains the forest fire-prone map of Meghalaya. The fire-prone map indicates the proneness of a forest area based on the frequency of the forest fire incidents actually experienced by the year in a given time. This map is useful to observe the zones of actual forest fire occurrence within a grid of 1 km.

The dashboard is available to any interested user at the Meghalaya Forest and Environment Department official website megforest.gov.in.

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