Experiences of coal fire detection and quantification for resources management

Uncontrolled coal seam fires are an environmental and economic problem of international magnitude. Today, China is the leading country of coal production, consumption and export. The annual Chinese coal production, which is about approx. 2.4 Mt per year, faces a problem of numerous uncontrolled burning coal fires mostly located in the northern Chinese coal belt. The determination of fire radiative energy (FRE) has been introduced recently as a new remote sensing technique to quantify forest and grassland fires. The main research in this project focuses on the development of robust routines to detect coal fire related thermal anomalies within the different areas under investigation. These developments are the prerequisite for a coal fire monitoring.