MONITORING FOREST FIRE AND ITS IMPACTS ON FAUNAL RESOURCES OF INDIA FOR CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT

In the present era of the 21^st century, forest fires have taken a lead role in destroying the ecosystem. Every year thousands of wildfires happen across the world and destroy forest resources and biodiversity. One forest fire may overrule all the efforts of conserving the forest wealth and all the wildlife that inhabit a forest. In our country, almost all forest fires are caused by human activity, and forest-dependent communities use fires in the forest for various purposes. Thus, to save our forest wealth, it is necessary to reduce the occurrence of wildfires, and for this purpose, we need proper monitoring of forest fires for better management. The present study was conducted to understand better the Spatio-temporal pattern in forest fire occurrence in India in the last two decades. The present study has used GIS techniques like mapping, monitoring, and MaxENT modeling with a combination of climatic and topographic data. Current research attempts to determine the annual forest fire occurrence in India from 2001 to 2019. The seasonal trend of forest fires has been described using different graph charts. The present study has implemented a maximum entropy model to identify the most vulnerable and potential areas for forest fire in India. The study also tries to determine the impacts of forest fires on faunal resources and the management of conserving faunal resources. The zonal statistics suggest that the mammal richness has increased with the increasing risk of forest fire, and the highest mammal richness is observed in the very-high forest fire risk zone.