Monitoring Papua New Guinea's Forests – the new Fire Watch website

Port Moresby, April 27, 2015 – Man made or natural fires are amongst the factors that destroy Papua New Guinea's unique forest resources. Losing forests is harmful in the fight against Climate Change and impacts negatively on the 85 percent of the population that live in rural areas and depend on the sustainable use of forests.
Providing a tool to monitor fires throughout the country is therefore important for awareness building, disaster mitigation and the sustainable future of Papua New Guinea, in line with the Responsible, Sustainable Strategy adopted by Government.
In this context, the University of Papua New Guinea Remote Sensing Centre launches the PNG Fire Watch website. This is a major new tool to facilitate disaster management and monitor forests in Papua New Guinea.
Supported with a grant by the European Union, the website uses the latest satellite imagery and image processing techniques, to advance an understanding of what is going on in PNG’s forests in 'real time'.
European Union Ambassador Martin Dihm said at the launch: "The new website is an instrument to support forest monitoring in Papua New Guinea. For the first time, authorities, citizens, in fact everybody interested are able to see the location of forest fires as they happen, right across the whole country, including the remotest village. This can be used for disaster mitigation and to monitor forestry resources. It can help to build awareness and support policies in the fight against Climate Change”.
"Sea level rise, severe flooding and droughts resulting from a warmer climate, affects us all. The Union will work very closely with the Pacific region and our important partner Papua New Guinea on these issues. In this context, European Union Commissioner for Climate Change, HE Migue

l Arias Cañete will visit Papua New Guinea on the occasion of the Pacific Islands Forum Summit in September."
European Union
The new Fire Watch website shows every location where a fire is burning, records where and when fires occur in PNG’s forests and automatically uploads the information onto the site as it happens.
Moreover, high resolution satellite images and maps of PNG can be viewed interactively with the locations of each fire. The website also features an archive of past locations, including time and date, of all fires detected across PNG since the mid 1990’s.
The Fire Watch website allows users to generate and print their own maps of fire locations in Papua New Guinea. The site is public and available free of charge to all users.
The new website can be viewed at http://fire.pngsdf.com.