BIRD flies over Colombia: A short mission of Earth observation

A great number of forest fires take place regularly around the planet. Some of them are systematically observed by sensors on board various space platforms. Like so many countries around the world, Colombia is no stranger to these phenomena. On a local and regional level fires cause environmental catastrophes on a variety of scales, destroying the vegetation, the biodiversity and causing damage to human activities [E. Lòpez, Determination of the conditions of risk and monitoring of forest fires by remote sensing tools and ground observations, in: IV Conference Applications of Science and Space Technology in the Americas and its Benefits for the Civil Society, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, 2002, www.minrelext.gov.co/ivcea/]. There are presently sensors available to try minimize environmental catastrophes and this report describes how risk conditions are determined and how monitoring is done for forest fires through remote monitoring techniques and land observations made in Colombia by a group of wild land fire fighters and BIRD, a German microsatellite and its flight over Colombia on September 16, 2003.