Reforestation and Fire Management in Madagascar with WorldDEM™ Neo

The Biodiverse Landscapes Fund (BLF), funded by UK International Development, supports a six-year programme in Madagascar focused on improving protected-area management, conserving biodiversity, enhancing terrestrial carbon retention, and supporting community livelihoods. A key component of this work involves modelling fire dynamics and identifying priority areas for reforestation in the central highlands, with a focus on the Kew Madagascar–managed Massif d’Itremo Protected Area, southeast of Antsirabe.

This landscape is topographically complex, with steep slopes and varied aspects that influence fire spread and natural fire breaks. These terrain features help identify potential fire refugia, which support the persistence of fire-sensitive forest species within an otherwise fire-prone grassland mosaic. However, existing elevation products are either too coarse or inconsistent to reliably detect such areas or support targeted restoration planning.

To address this, the project uses WorldDEM™ Neo Level 2 Digital Terrain Model data (5 m resolution) from AIRBUS, covering 946 km² of the project area. This high-resolution DTM provides a consistent and accurate representation of elevation and surface form across the central highlands. From this, key terrain attributes including slope, curvature, and flow accumulation are derived to identify likely fire refugia and assess reforestation suitability.

These terrain layers are combined with climate variables and land cover maps to explore how topography influences fire exposure, vegetation structure, and restoration potential. Additional work involves downscaling the analysis using coarser-resolution DTMs (e.g. 12 m, 30 m) to evaluate how predictive performance and spatial accuracy change with resolution, informing the broader applicability of the approach.