The most interesting Satellite Observations of Forest Fires
Fire in Colorado
Mesa Verde fire, Day 1: 1996 Aug 19 09:22 UT
This fire occured on the day after this web site was started and was
not even noticed at first. I processed the Hell's Canyon area, California,
and several other areas before work in the morning but did not look at
Colorado. While eating lunch I was reading the day's news on the web
when I found that Mesa Verde had been evacuated due to a fire there.
I thought that perhaps it could be seen on the morning image and when I
looked there it was. Since this was a
nighttime pass only the
channel 3 view was of interest. This view is centered on the Four
Corners area which is where four states come together at one point.
The state boundaries are shown in red, Colorado is the state in the northeast
section of the image. The bright spot in Colorado is the Mesa Verde fire and
it shows up on the
Hot Spot map. The similar size bright spot almost due south in
New Mexico is not detected as a hot spot but is often visible in nighttime
channel 3 images of this area. My guess was that it was a cooling pond
at a large power plant and this was seconded by
Peggy Gaudy pgaudy@nm0151wp.nmso.nm.blm.gov (a BLM archeologist in
Farmington, NM): "On your map the "hot" area near Farmington is
probably Morgan Lake, which like
you said, is the cooling lake for the Four Corners Power Plant."
Some other maps of the Mesa Verde area:
Mesa Verde fire, Day 2: 1996 Aug 20 09:10 UT
Scattered clouds blocked the view of the fire for the NOAA-14
daytime pass over the area so the next time it was seen was the
NOAA-14
nighttime pass on the
channel 3 image. As can be seen in both the channel 3 image and the
Hot Spot map the fire has spread in the nearly 24 hours between the
two views.
Mesa Verde after the fire
Clouds prevented any more sightings of the fire itself. By the time this
areas was again visible the fire was out and only its scar was left.
The first post-fire view of the scar is from a nighttime
channel 3 view taken 1996 Aug 28 09:24 UT
which shows a dark spot at the fire's location (this image is one of
a series of
nighttime channel 3 views along with an interpretive discussion).
It is interesting to compare the
channel 3 view and the
shaded relief map.
The first daytime view of the fire scar was acquired later in the morning, a
color composite at 1996 Aug 28 14:27 UT by NOAA-12.
The fire scar is very visible as a deep blue area on Mesa Verde, distinct
from its surroundings. As discussed in an earlier section, the blue color
of a new fire scar may be explained as follows.
Channel 1 is the visible channel and is colored green in the
color composite here. If the area is blackened by fire then channel 1
will contribute much less green to the color image in the fire area.
Channel 2 is in the near infrared where vegetation has a high reflectance.
If the vegetation is destroyed then channel 2 will contribute much less red.
This leaves the blue of channel 3, a large part
of which is the thermal glow of the warm earth itself. Perhaps also the fire
blackened area absorbs enough extra sunlight to warm up and glow
even brighter in channel 3, adding some extra blue to the color composite.
The
next daytime view of this area was obtained the next day, again
from NOAA-12.
List of images
This section gives a convenient list of the images discussed
above, plus a few extras.
Selected maps of the Mesa Verde area
1996 Aug 19 09:22 UT
NOAA-14 nighttime
Fire
1996 Aug 20 09:10 UT
NOAA-14 nighttime
Fire
1996 Aug 28 09:24 UT
NOAA-14 nighttime
Fire Scar
1996 Aug 28 14:27 UT
NOAA-12 morning
Fire Scar
1996 Aug 29 14:05 UT
NOAA-12 morning
Fire Scar
|