Fire Case study
10 July 2009
The fire case study will give the students an opportunity to report back on
4 main themes around the False Bay/Gordons Bay fires of December
2008. Start by opening the False Bay fire report text file in the Overview
folder and open the article links.
1) Report on Land Cover classification and fire risk
Make use of the high resolution Spot 5 subset of 23 July 2008 to derive a
land cover classification for the region. They should separate the 3 main
classes, urban, natural vegetation and agriculture and create a map of the
classification. This can be done with manual on-screen digitising or
automated classification techniques.
2) Report on Fire Danger
Students must evaluate the atmospheric conditions for the 6 – 9 Dec 08
and calculate an FDI based on the Lowveld model. The model algorithm
is provided in the excel spreadsheet. Assume that all vegetation is fully
cured. Calculate FDI on 12:00 pm input data.
3) Report of Vegetation Conditions
Students must investigate the two main components of vegetation (dead
fuel and live fuel loads) within the area affected by fire in 2008
December.
For the dead fuel load investigation, look at the MODIS burned area
product from David Roy (2000 – 2008). Report on the day since last burn
for the central area (AOI.kml) affected by fire during the December 2008
fire. It is recommended that students use Google Earth to do the analysis
of the dead fuel load by importing the 8 years of Roy burned area data to
see if any fires were occurred in the area of interest (Instructions for
Google Earth data import on page 3).
For the live fuel loads the MODIS EVI time series data (2000 – 2009)
was extracted for the central part (AOI.kml) of the fire. Investigate the
graph (EVI Time Series data) and report on the vegetation condition
prior to the December burn.
Also compare the rainfall data (Station rainfall) graph for the AOI.kml
region with the EVI time series data. Add a trend line through the data in
excel and discuss the observation. (Clue: look at the difference between
the trend line of the EVI time series data and the Rainfall data over time)
4) Integrated Fire Map
Students must utilise the MODIS active fire product as well as the
MODIS burned area product to derive a map which tells the story of
where the fire started and how it spread from 6 – 12 Dec 08. The final
map must be integrated with the risk map derived in point 1.
Information package provided to students:
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Newspaper article and online video of fires to set the scene
1 high resolution satellite image of the area
Air temp, relative humidity, and wind speed for 6 – 9 Dec 08
Algorithm for Lowveld FDI
2000 - 2008 David Roy Burned Area data
2000 – 2008 Active fire data
EVI graph 2000 - 2008 (16 day data)
(UL: -34.246, 18.929) (LR: -34.264, 18.947)
December 2008 Louis Giglio burned area data
MODIS active fire shape file and kml file for 6 – 12 Dec 08
Software requirements:
Google Earth
ArcMap
Envi
Excel
Adding Burned Area jpg images to Google Earth
The following steps describe the process of overlaying the burned area jpg files in
Google Earth. All of the jpg files are aligned to a specific geographic area, thus the
geographic parameters that are provided in the steps can be used for all the given
burned area files.
1. Open Google Earth
2. Go to the menu and select Add → Image Overlay
3. In the name field, enter the appropriate name.
4. Click on the Browse option and select a burned area jpg file.
5. Click on the 'Location' which is to the right of the 'Refresh' tab.
6. Enter the following appropriate parameters in the North, South, East and West
input fields.
North: 29°60'0.00"S
South: 39°59'51.47"S
East:
26°6'31.98"E
West: 11°32'49.22"E
7. Click the OK button.
8. The overlaying burned area image will be displayed in gray scale as shown in
the illustration
9. Change the transparency setting of the overlaying image to view the
background of Google Earth.