IN039-05
FIRMS US/Canada – An Extension of NASA Near Real-Time FIRMS for the Forest Service and Inter-agency Wildfire Management Community

Tuesday, 15 December 2020: 17:42
Virtual
Robert Edward Wolfe1, Brad Quayle2, Diane Davies3,4, Gregory A Ederer1,5 and Otmar Olsina1,5, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)USDA Forest Service, Vallejo, CA, United States, (3)Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, United States, (4)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, ESDIS Code 423, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)Global Science and Technology Inc Greenbelt, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Abstract:
As a part of broader, long time collaboration efforts between the two agencies, the USDA Forest Service has partnered with NASA for nearly 20 years to leverage near real-time MODIS and VIIRS fire products to support wildfire management. The timely availability of these data to the Forest Service and interagency partners indicate the location, extent, intensity and impacts of wildfire activity at a regional/national scale as well as informs decisions by fire managers regarding strategic planning and response to wildfire incidents.

Historically, Forest Service use of MODIS and VIIRS fire data products has included coordinating with multiple ground station partners in North America to collect direct broadcast data and use data processing technologies and science processing algorithms provided by the NASA Direct Readout Laboratory to produce near real-time data for those regional areas. The derived data were integrated at the Forest Service to produce and disseminate operational value-added fire geospatial products to the user community. In this automated workflow, direct readout data were also complemented with low latency active fire detection data available from the NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) to overcome direct readout coverage limitations and routine anomalies associated with satellite direct broadcast data.

The Forest Service has recently migrated its operational fire mapping framework for the U.S. and Canada, the Active Fire Mapping Program, to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. As part of this effort, the Forest Service is partnering with NASA to integrate and leverage FIRMS tools and capabilities. FIRMS US/Canada is a customized version of FIRMS to disseminate operational fire data, mapping and visualization products for the US and Canada in near real-time. The web-based application integrates additional near real-time science data products provided by NASA Land, Atmosphere for Near Real-Time capabilities for EOS (LANCE) and other cooperators, includes additional geospatial data layers for context and interpretation, as well as additional functionality and tools. This presentation is an overview of the FIRMS US/Canada effort planned for formal release in 2021.

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