Remote sensing monitoring and assessment of fire-fighting effects in Wuda coal field,Inner Mongolia

In order to assess the fire-fighting effects in the Wuda coal field of Inner Mongolia, the authors adopted two Landsat 5 images(acquired in 2008 and 2011)and two Landsat 8 images(acquired in 2013 and 2015)as data sources which respectively represented before, during and last stage fire-fighting activities, generated four land surface temperature maps by using mono-window algorithm and recognized coal fire areas based on self-adaptive gradient-based thresholding(SAGBT)method.The results show that 75% overlapping between identified coal fire areas and in situ sampling coal fire areas.The coal fire evolutions on spatial distribution revealed that coal fire area presented remarkable downfall trend from 1.194 km2 in 2008 to 0.873 km2 in 2015.Overall, coal fire areas were reduced by 26.88% due to performing fire-fighting activities;however, more measures should be strengthened by local administrators because there remain residual 73.12% coal fire areas.