August 24, 2001

NASA Satellite, University of Maryland and U.S. Forest Service Provide Rapid Response to Wildfires

U.S. 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 the entire United States, which helps fire experts manage fires more effectively, both during and after wildfire events. The effort is a collaboration between NASA, NOAA, the University of Maryland and the USDA Forest Service.

The Terra satellite beams daily images of western U.S. wildfires to NASA within a few hours of the time that it passes over the region. These images, showing the locations of active fires, are transmitted to the Forest Service. When the Forest Service's own direct broadcast receiving stations are completed in October, this will reduce the transmission time to minutes. Images from Terra's Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument will become a regular part of the Forest Service's fire monitoring toolkit.

"NASA remains deeply committed to working cooperatively with its sister agencies to monitor and combat wildfires across the nation. Our investment in the Terra Earth Observing System is starting to pay tremendous dividends to the American taxpayer," said Ghassem Asrar, NASA's Associate Administrator for the Office of Earth Science.