Fires were started

A geographer from Leicester University has produced a map of the scorched Earth for every year since the turn of the Millennium.

Dr Kevin Tansey of the Department of Geography, a leading scientist in an international team, created a visual impression of the fire scars on the planet between 2000 and 2007. The work was funded by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

The map reveals that between 3.5 and 4.5 million km² of vegetation burns on an annual basis, an area equivalent to the European Union.

The information could be used by scientists involved in monitoring global warming, measuring and understanding pollutants in the atmosphere, managing forests and controlling fire and even for predicting future fire occurrence.

'We have produced a global data base and map of the occurrence of fire scars covering the period 2000-2007. Prior to this development, data were only available for the year 2000. With seven years of data, it is not possible to determine if there is an increasing trends in the occurrence of fire, but we have significant year-to-year differences, of the order of 20 per cent, in the area that is burnt,' said Dr Tansey, a lecturer in remote sensing at Leicester University.