Remote sensing and modeling of wildfires

Abstract

Abstract-The application of satellite remote sensing to the detection and study of wildfires has grown rapidly in recent years as new tools have become available and are put into use. Space borne imagery can provide a unique perspective to viewing the fire giving space/time coverage not available with any other observational system. One aspect of fires that can both be detected with satellite imagery and modeled numerically is the smoke plume produced by the fire. Surprisingly, most models designed to study smoke plumes were created to study controlled burns and not wildfires. We use one such model to compare model simulations with a suite of different types of satellite imagery to study a major wildfire. The 2003 Aspen Fire in the mountains north of Tucson, Arizona is used as a case study for the analysis of satellite imagery of a wildfire smoke plume in conjunction with model simulations of this plume. We clearly demonstrate that this plume model can be used to adequately simulate the fire plume as depicted in the satellite imagery when the plume achieves a sufficient altitude. For weak fires and low wind conditions the plumes often follow the local surface topography.

A multi-decadal history of biomass burning plume heights identified using aerosol index measurements

“…Duncan, 2007) and the troposphere (e.g. Kuester et al, 2005;Li et al, 2005). The injection height of smoke plumes from forest fires is a key input for aerosol transport modeling, as the height is critical for determining the distance and direction the smoke will travel (Westphal and Toon, 1991;Ginoux et al, 2001;Colarco et al, 2004).…”

A multi-decadal history of biomass burning plume heights identified using aerosol index measurements

“…Duncan, 2007) and the troposphere (e.g. Kuester et al, 2005;Li et al, 2005). The injection height of smoke plumes from forest fires is a key input for aerosol transport modeling, as the height is critical for determining the distance and direction the smoke will travel (Westphal and Toon, 1991;Ginoux et al, 2001;Colarco et al, 2004).…”