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Space Satellites Help Firefighters Monitor Raging Wildfires
By Maia Weinstock
Staff Writer
posted: 12:01 pm ET
11 August 2000
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Space Satellites Continue to Monitor Western Wildfires As firefighters from the western United States well know, wildfires are extremely difficult to contain. This year more than 63,900 fires have spread, often uncontrolled, across the United States. They have consumed more than 4.1 million acres (1.7 million hectares) of brush, woodlands and populated areas. Major wildfires continue to rage this week in Montana and Idaho, but firefighters and U.S. Forest Service workers now have help from above -- several Earth-orbiting satellites are monitoring the fires from several hundred miles (kilometers) above the ground. Instruments on three American satellites are currently looking for signs of large-scale fires: NASAs Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), as well as the instruments on the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administrations Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 8 ( GOES 8). Over the last few weeks, these satellites have been able to pinpoint smoke plumes and show researchers the extent of the huge billows of smoke from nearly 50 large fires. 
A satellite view of the western U.S. shows billows of gray smoke originating from wildfires in Idaho and Montana. "If youre sitting on the ground fighting [a fire], you dont really have any perspective as to the extent of it," said Gene Feldmen, a scientist with the SeaWiFS project. "The perspective from space is that it really lets us see the Earth in a much bigger context than were used to." TOMS, launched on board the Earth Probe satellite in 1996, circles the globe once every 90 minutes and maps the entire planet once each day. It "sees" Earth at ultraviolet wavelengths, giving scientists a view of smoke and other aerosols. In contrast, SeaWiFS and the instruments on GOES 8 give scientists a view of the world similar to what an astronaut might see, since they operate at visible and infrared wavelengths. ~ Once downloaded from the satellites, the fire information is sent out to local authorities as well as national officials. Members of the U.S. Forest Service regularly brief the secretary of agriculture -- as well as members of Congress and the White House -- on the severity of major fires in the U.S. This information not only helps monitor the blazes, but it is used to warn people downwind of the fires plumes that their air may contain high doses of smoke, which can be dangerous with people who have asthma or other breathing difficulties. Near real-time data from several of these instruments is also available at the click of a computer mouse through web pages set up to keep people informed of a fire's status. "We put [data] on our website every day, usually within minutes of receiving it," said Jar Herman, chief scientist for the TOMS mission. As a result, anyone with an internet connection can log on and see how the fires and their smoke plumes are progressing on a daily basis. The combination of the three U.S. satellites also provide scientists with a nearly complete view of fires raging across the globe. Today, researchers have satellite images of fires raging in remote areas of such regions as Australia, Africa and Siberia. These images, said Feldman, help researchers figure out how wildfires originate. In addition, NASA already has plans to add one more fire-detecting satellite to its fleet of Earth-monitoring probes. The Terra satellite, part of NASAs Earth Observing System project, will add substantially to fire-watching capabilities from space. But according to officials close to the project, while the satellite was launched in December 1999, its systems are not yet ready to begin fire investigation.
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