UMD-led Team Finds Improved Way to Track Wildfires

A University of Maryland researcher has discovered a new method to extract significantly more information from existing satellite-based wildfire detection systems.

Shane Coffield, a scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, led the research team that combined satellite imagery algorithms with deeper fire-behavior knowledge to offer a more complete picture of wildfire activity in the western United States. The results were published Wednesday in Remote Sensing of Environment. 

The research team, which also included scientists from NASA and the University of California, Irvine, examined imagery and data collected by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on three different satellites looking at the Earth. Scientists and fire managers rely on VIIRS for fire detection, especially in remote parts of the world where satellite data may be the first or only source of information.

VIIRS captures images at a coarse resolution; one pixel on satellite imagery represents land measuring 375 meters by 375 meters. Fire detection algorithms scan each pixel and flag hot spots of potential fires. Pixels that partially meet fire criteria are labeled as “candidate” fires, but are not delivered to scientists and fire managers as part of the standard set of fire detections.

Coffield discovered that candidate fire pixels can reveal additional fire activity, particularly useful during periods with dense smoke, cloud cover or low-intensity fires.

“Existing fire detection approaches could be adjusted to be more sensitive when we already know a wildfire is occurring, or to simply provide this candidate fire information in a more easily accessible format,” he said. 

In the case of the 2020 Creek Fire, which burned hundreds of thousands of acres across central California, having this information accessible in near real-time would have improved smoke forecasts. They previously lacked fire activity information on multiple days with high-intensity burning.

NASA’s Wildfire Tracking Lab plans to integrate the new findings into algorithms to better track obscured fires and identify remaining hot spots, especially in tropical regions.