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Landsat Fire Spotting - Thermal

Related pages: Sentinel-2 Live Fuel Moisture Content  Burned Area Mapping    Post-Fire Erosion 

Landsat imagery (free) can be used along with free GIS software (or other GIS Software, such as ArcGIS) for wildfire locating and mapping. Thermal data from an entire Landsat scene can be used to determine if there is a fire in the scene and/or to map the location and size of the fire for a certain day and time. The graphics that follow describe the process. The example is from the Hewlett Fire, May 2012, CO (NW of Fort Collins). (Orange line in first slide is Colorado-Wyoming border.)

 

Landsat 7 has stripings of missing data, which can be seen in 2nd and 3rd slides.

Images transition every 4 seconds (or click arrows or dots); description appears below graphic.