Forest fire prevention training using GIS launched

AMMAN — The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) on Sunday launched a training on the utilisation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to improve forest fire prevention, early detection, control and documentation.

This training falls within the activities of the “Enhancing the capacity of the forestry sector to control and manage forest fires in Jordan” project, which addresses the country’s technical capacity needs and support in regard to forest fire management, according to an FAO statement.

The objective of thetraining is to build and enhance the Ministry of Agriculture/Forestry Departments’ expertise on using GIS (e.g. GPS) toimprove forest fire management.

The training also targeted the groups of technicians and experts in forest management from the Agriculture Ministry who attended the first training course, held in early September.

FAO has procured GPS units to support the training sessions, whichwill be handed over to the forestry department in the Agriculture Ministry, said the statement. 

Forest protection is a pillar of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 15: “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. 

It also falls under the FAO Strategic Objective 5: Increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises, and Strategic Objective 2: Make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable, concluded the statement.