2003 EARTH SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| FIRES BELOW, EYES ABOVE: NASA HELPS FIRE MANAGERS KEEP AN EYE ON WHAT'S HOT | G03-039 | 07/22/03 | 00:20:00 | In the past few years NASA has developed and successfully launched a sophisticated fleet of Earth-observing satellites that have changed the face of wildfire management. Designed to gather revolutionary types of data about our home planet for research purposes, the onboard instruments also are able to monitor wildfires around the clock and around the globe. This constant flow of information allows fire managers to produce daily fire maps that illuminate what's on fire and who's at risk.
The 2003 fire season ushers in significant developments in NASA's contribution to fire management. Along with flight hardware advancements, the space agency is able to provide information that is applicable right now to real-world situations such as fires. Scientists are now testing technology and communication between satellites that will help to automate many Earth-observing tasks and allow experts to focus their attention on the data that matters right now. NASA and its partners expect these new techniques and technologies to help professionals plan for and respond to dangerous fires.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): Hot Tips: NASA Technology Helps Fire Managers (Reporter Package) - Information matters. To the fireman who asks, "Where's the fire?" the quality of the answer he or she gets can mean life or death.
With the summer fire season already ablaze, NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is contributing new, powerful tools to the job of fire management-tools like no other organization in the world can deliver. A sophisticated fleet of satellites provides critical information about what's burning and who's at risk.
Multiple satellite sensors tell experts where fuels have built up, where rain is lacking, and where roads and cities may intersect wilderness areas that are at risk for fire. During the peak season, U.S. fire officials produce daily active fire maps using data from the specialized instruments on NASA satellites. Once a fire is somewhat contained, fire managers continue to use this data to plan for rehabilitation and monitoring.
The 2003 fire season ushers in significant developments in NASA's contribution to fire management. Scientists are now testing systems that will promote communication between satellites and sort through the large amounts of data they provide. The whole processŠis automated. That makes the observations and analysis fast, and in terms of fire management, speed counts.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (2): Fast Fire (Anchor VO) - This summer, NASA is taking a step to help stamp out forest fires. By employing satellites that can take stock of fires before, during, and after the blaze, the space agency is making a major contribution to fire management by providing data to professionals who cannot be everywhere at the same time. While global coverage allows scientists to see the big picture, sophisticated software alerts officials who need to know in a hot minute what's on fire.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (3): RapidFire: Daily Fire Detection - The MODIS Land Rapid Response system is an evolving technological tool to help manage active fire data in near real-time. More commonly known as "RapidFire," the system is semi-autonomous, making both observations of and determinations about fires using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. When it detects points on the ground that fit the proper criteria, RapidFire makes preliminary analysis of the data. The sorted data is then processed and distributed to a number of end users, including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Interagency Fire Center, and the U.N. Global Fire Monitoring Center. This pre-sorting can dramatically enhance the ability of fire managers to respond, filtering a potentially torrential flow of information. The following animation zooms into the Aspen fire outside of Tucson, Arizona, on June 20, 2003. This image is from the MODIS instrument onboard the Aqua satellite.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (4): Always Burning Somewhere: A Year of Fire Around the Globe - This visualization shows a global picture of fires, scintillating the Earth's surface like pin pricks of light. The individual fire pixels themselves transition through a range of color, indicating duration and intensity as measured by the MODIS instrument on-orbit. These fires occurred between July 2001 and August 2002.
a) Global Fire - Flat Map
b) Global Fire - rotating Earth
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (5): Multi-Sensor Observations: Fires in the Western United States in 2002 - Earth-observing satellites and their sensors are varied in what they measure, how they measure it, and how close they get. NASA and its partners manage instruments that collect data on cloud circulation, atmospheric aerosols, thermal anomalies, surface radiance, land cover, wind vectors, and rainfall patterns. For the study of wildfires, these data sets become infinitely more valuable when combined together. Like weather, fire is dynamic and difficult to predict. But a fire manager can get a much clearer understanding of a fire when armed with data on what's burning, where the rain is, and which way the wind is blowing. The following animation shows cloud circulation, rainfall patterns, aerosol index, and land cover patterns for the Western United States during the summer of 2002, highlighting the Hayman, Rodeo-Chediski, and Biscuit Fires. The Earth science data featured in the following visualization are managed and distributed by NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) through the Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) Alliance.
The following data sets were used in this animation:
Cloud circulation: Geostationary Operation Environmental (GOES) Satellite, NASA/NOAA.
Rainfall patterns: Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), NASA/NASDA.
Aerosol index: Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), NASA.
Land cover patterns: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), NASA.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (6): The Hayman Fire - Smoke in Three Dimensions - In June 2002, the Hayman fire burned just north of Denver, Colorado, for nearly one month. Data from Terra's multi-angle spectroradiometer, called MISR, reveals the fire's giant smoke plume in three dimensions. Combined with MODIS thermal and land cover data, fire managers can see that the Hayman fire burned mostly in evergreen and savannah regions.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (7): The Rodeo-Chediski Fire - Recovery Efforts - On June 21, 2002, the Rodeo and Chediski Fires in east-central Arizona were still two separate fires. This true-color scene from the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus instrument onboard the Landsat 7 satellite shows the massive quantities of smoke streaming northward from the fires, which were burning about 100 miles east-northeast of Phoenix. The smaller Chediski Fire is on the right, and the Rodeo Fire is on the left. Over the weekend of June 22, the two fires merged into a single 300,000+ acre blaze - the largest in state history. The second image penetrates the smoke to show the active flame area. The third image shows the burned areas; this helps forest experts plan and execute forest recovery and watershed protection.
Courtesy: NASA/USGS
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| ITEM (8): The Biscuit Fire - Burning Radiance - Just one week after the Rodeo-Chediski fire, the Biscuit fire began to blaze in southern Oregon. The Biscuit fire ravaged nearly 500,000 acres of evergreen needle-leaf forest over the course of two months. The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on the Terra satellite is capable of generating not only elevation data, but also land surface temperatures, radiance, and reflectance. The following animation zooms into the Biscuit fire and ends with a visual representation of ASTER radiance data. Burned areas are dark purple, and active fires are bright purple. Images like this help fire managers determine burn severity and make rehabilitation plans.
Courtesy: NASA/METI/ERSDAC
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| ITEM (9): Swamps and Deserts and Everything in Between - Fire managers are not only interested in how to control or suppress existing fires. They're also on the lookout for places where fires might have a strong chance for taking off. One of the principal factors in determining the risk for large-scale fires is the accurate measurement of land cover. By analyzing the spectra, or reflected light, from the ground it's flown over, MODIS can, for example, determine if a particular region has extensive continuous fields. Large areas of continuous biomass like this are prime places for unchecked fires to not only ignite, but also rage. In this visualization, we see a representation of MODIS data depicting sixteen different kinds of ground cover around the globe. The sixteen categories are described in the following animation.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (10): Tracking Smoke and Pollution from Fire
- Fires can create dense blankets of pollution that impact human health. The Terra satellite carries an instrument allowing scientists to track the carbon monoxide generated by worldwide fires and other human activities. These images show how high concentrations of carbon monoxide, shown in red, travel across continental boundaries. The observations represent a powerful new tool for identifying and quantifying pollution sources associated with fire and for observing the transport of pollution on international and global scales. The data for these images were collected by the MOPITT instrument (Measurements of Pollution in the Troposphere) onboard the Terra satellite.
Courtesy: NASA/NCAR/CSA
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| ITEM (11): Smart Satellites Get a Closer Look - Along with semi-autonomous advancements in the RapidFire system, NASA is testing new integration techniques with the EO-1 spacecraft and its cutting edge ALI instrument. It works like this: when MODIS spots an area on the ground that may indicate fire, advanced software puts out an alert. That message essentially instructs ALI to point itself towards the zone of interest and get a close-up. If the resulting picture from this orbital dance shows risk for fire, the system can alert experts and officials to take action on the ground. The whole process is automated. That makes the observations and analysis fast, and in terms of fire management, speed counts. A system like this has the potential to greatly accelerate notification of potential trouble spots before they can get out of hand.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (12): Fire Towers in Space - Several satellites contribute to U.S. fire monitoring efforts.
a. Terra
b. Aqua
c. EO-1
d. Landsat 7
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (13): Flying in Formation - NASA is presently flying four spacecraft in Enhanced Formation Flying (EFF), a first for this many space faring vehicles. Soon after achieving orbit, the EO-1 became part of a carefully choreographed constellation, joining Landsat 7, the Earth observing flagship Terra, and SAC-C, an instrument designed and managed by the space agency of Argentina. The operation offers unique research possibilities, including highly precise cross calibration of instruments, and atmospheric correction of data acquired by Landsat 7 and the MODIS instrument onboard the Terra spacecraft.
Courtesy: NASA
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| ITEM (14): Fire B-roll - NASA satellites aid fire managers both during and after the blaze. These shots follow the process on the ground from flames to burn scar through rehabilitation.
Courtesy: NASA/USFS
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Earth Science Gallery