Volume 9, Number 6 • November/December 2001 • Advanced Technologies

NASA Reduces Wildfire Response Time

US firefighters and land managers are using the most modern NASA satellite data to combat wildfires. NASA’s Terra satellite provides a view of fires across all of the conterminous United States, which helps manage fires more effectively, both during and after wildfire events. The effort is a collaboration between NASA, the University of Maryland and the USDA Forest Service.

The Terra satellite beams daily images of western US wildfires to NASA within a few hours of the time that it passes over the region. These images and active fire detections are transmitted to the US Forest Service (USFS). Images from Terra’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) will become a regular part of the Forest Service’s fire-monitoring toolkit.

The view from NASA’s Terra satellite of wildfires in the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. Photo provided by Goddard Space Flight Center.

In order to use MODIS data to tackle forest fires, a complex communications network must be maintained between NASA, the University of Maryland and the USDA Forest Service. The three institutions are all integrated under the Rapid Response Project. Rob Sohlberg, at the University of Maryland’s department of geography in College Park, Maryland, leads the Rapid Response Project with Jacques Descloitres at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This program was created in response to a very bad fire season in 2000, including extensive wildfires in Idaho and Montana.

“The Active Fire Maps offer the potential for understanding the “big picture” when working on resource allocations decisions,” said Alice Forbes, deputy director for Forest Service Fire and Aviation Operations at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). “The maps also can help the public understand where the fires are located and give them a look at the burned areas after fire season.”

The University and NASA have developed all of the needed software, which will be installed at the USFS direct broadcast station. The USFS has developed the corresponding software that creates the maps from the Terra data using standard USFS mapping techniques.

The USDA Forest Service Remote-Sensing Applications Center (RSAC), in Salt Lake City, Utah, provides development, support and application of remote-sensing technologies and techniques. Currently, the Forest Service is building a MODIS processing center in Salt Lake City to generate real-time images of western wildfires. However, the Forest Service will still receive imagery of the eastern US from the University and NASA.

Keith Lannom, the operations program leader at RSAC, stated “the University of Maryland sends MODIS images and active fire location information daily to RSAC staff who are overlaying state boundaries and topographical features on the images to best determine where fires are occurring. These maps show active fire areas in real-time on the Internet.”

The maps also show areas that were burned during previous days. These maps will be used for strategic asset allocation when fighting wildfires. Advanced products to assist the Burned-Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) teams are being developed from Terra data. The BAER team consists of soil scientists, hydrologists, wildlife specialists and other scientists. They use burn severity maps—derived from satellite and ground measurements—to take measures that will prevent further erosion, soil loss and adverse impacts to water quality. It is anticipated that Terra data will provide a quick look, which can then be refined on the ground. The maps will also help scientists identify critical wildlife habitat affected by the fire and facilitate reforesting an area.

Wei Min Hao, the project leader of the Fire Chemistry Project at the Forest Service’s Fire Science Laboratory in Montana, is developing a MODIS aerosol product to track smoke dispersed by wildfires and to determine the impact on regional air quality. Hao said, “during fires where there are large amounts of smoke, reconnaissance planes that normally map fires can’t fly into an area, but MODIS can provide those pictures from space.” Dr. Yoram Kaufman, from NASA, is working with Dr. Hao on these products.

The Terra spacecraft is part of NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research effort being conducted to determine how human-induced and natural changes affect our global environment. Q

For more information, contact Jacques Descloitres, jack@ltpmail.gsfc. nasa.gov, or go to the Web site http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov. Please mention you read about it in Innovation.

NASA Official: Jonathan Root • Web Design: Printing & Design Office, NASA Headquarters • Credits