Terra’s MODIS and MISR instruments were featured in an article in AGU’s eos.org, titled, A Global Perspective on Wildfires. The article, written by Ralph Kahn, highlights how twenty years of satellite data are used in wildfire management.
“Remote sensing instruments are relatively blunt objects for characterizing wildfires and their impacts, compared with traditional in situ monitoring. However, they offer the advantage of providing frequent, broad coverage at minimal incremental cost and at no risk to observers. Over the past 20 years, the research community has developed tools and techniques to capture key aspects of fire behavior and impacts, with data from spaceborne instruments such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites and the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) aboard Terra. This article reviews selected contributions that satellite instruments are making to advance our understanding and monitoring of, as well as our responses to, wildfires globally.”
-Ralph Kahn, A Global Perspective on Wildfires