Scientists Propose Satellite Early Warning System For Forest Fires

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "As firefighters emerge from another record wildfire season in the Western United States, Robert Sanders reports at the UC Berkeley News Center that scientists have designed a satellite using state-of-the-art sensors, that could view the Western US almost continuously, snapping pictures of the ground every few seconds searching for small hot spots (12 m2) that could be newly ignited wildfires. Firefighting resources could then be directed to these spots in hopes of preventing the fires from growing out of control and threatening lives and property. "If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," says fire expert Scott Stephens. Fire detection today is much like it was 200 years ago, relying primarily on spotters in fire towers or on the ground and on reports from members of the public. This information is augmented by aerial reconnaissance and lightning detectors that steer firefighters to ground strikes, which are one of the most common wildfire sparks. But satellite technology, remote sensing and computing have advanced to the stage where it's now possible to orbit a geostationary satellite that can reliably distinguish small, but spreading, wildfires with few false alarms. Carl Pennypacker estimates that the satellite, which could be built and operated by the federal government, would cost several hundred million dollars – a fraction of the nation's $2.5 billion yearly firefighting budget. "With a satellite like this, we will have a good chance of seeing something from orbit before it becomes an Oakland fire," says Pennypacker. "It could pay for itself in one firefighting season.""

Comments

Manned!

[mbstone]

Instead of an automatic system there should be a space capsule with a human park ranger spotter inside.

In the off-season it should be left vacant so anybody can come and live there for free.

Re:Manned!

[glavenoid]

Or we could combine it with the proposed early-warning asteroid-collision alert system and direct the asteroids to extinguish the forest fires. Solve two problems at once!

That's cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, though, that large wildfires only happen because there aren't enough small ones.

That is, if an area burns out, there's no fuel left for another fire, at least for a while, and the ashes and room are good for growth. If you consistently put out all the fires, you end up with forests full of fuel waiting for a gigantic fire to happen.

So merely spotting and putting out isn't good enough. The forest needs to burn now and then, too.

Re:That's cool

[Joce640k]

Or we can have pretty forests with firebreaks.

We actually have that capability in the 21st century. It's true.

Re:That's cool

[TapeCutter]

Despite the recent fire in NSW, hitting spot fires fast in the fire season has been proven to reduce the damage from bushfires, off course you need to combine that with slow controlled burns in the off season. There's no "silver bullet", but a satellite would be a handy weapon.

Re:That's cool

[TapeCutter]

The black Saturday fires in Victoria had a 15km high plume that created it's own weather and wind, it was igniting spot fires 20km ahead of the front. There is no simple fix, it's about risk management.

Re:That's cool

[fermion]

There is much evidence to suggest that the aggressive fire management is the reason we have such big fires. Fires are a natural part of the forest. Some trees have even evolved to depend on fire for the life cycle. Be it lightening or accidentally human fire there is no reason why a fire in the forest needs to be put out. Maybe limited with fire break, but not put out. The damage of a fire is often caused when it has been prevented so often that it burns so hot that the forest cannot regenerate.

In am also not sure what the value is of risking human lives to save property. It seems every year so family has lost a loved one fighting a forest fire. Why? So someone's replaceable home can be saved? A forest fire should be treated like a hurricane. There is time secure the belongings and evacuate.

Re:That's cool

[ShanghaiBill]

Or we could put those pesky drones to better use with real time surveilance and find the root cause of the fires...NAH.

In the USA, most fires are started by human activity. But most BIG fires are started by lightning in remote areas. Fires started by humans are usually quickly reported and extinguished. Fires started by lightning can get too big to control before they are even detected. This satellite system would mostly help with the remote fires started by lightning.

Re:That's cool

[Macgrrl]

Assumption #1; fires started by lightning would presumably have some form of cloud cover (lightning point of origin), would this obscure the view of a 10mx10m fire until after it has become large enough to be dangerous?

Is it common to have lightning without clouds? I'm trying to think if I recall ever seeing lightning out of a clear sky.

I live in Victoria (Australia) and remember the Ash Wednesday bushfires from a first hand - sitting on the beach watching it come down the hill because we were cut off before the evacuation call went out - point of view. As such, I have an interest in anything that gives an early warning.

Re:That's cool

[Macgrrl]

Anecdotally, during the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria (Australia), roughly 1/3 of the state burned. That's with fire crews actively trying to put the fire out and prevent it from taking over highly populated areas.

It is not inconceivable that left unattended significantly more area would have been consumed, and that it would have reached population areas such as Geelong or Bendigo, which could not easily have been evacuated.

To give you an idea of the speed it was traveling, at the point we were evacuated, we were told the fire was at Airey's Inlet and we had less than 5 minutes to get to the beach at Road Knight before it was due to hit. It takes roughly 10 minutes to drive to Airey's from where we lived at the speed limit (100kmp).

Bushfires spring up out of nowhere, are largely unpredictable as they can make their own winds and change direction in a moment. While you can predict high risk days, you don't know where they will start - unlike a hurricane which takes time to form and you can see it coming usually days in advance.

Use GPS

[Anonymous Coward]

Every GPS satellite has automatic nuclear-detonation detectors built in. Just turn the sensitivity up a little bit, and presto! A global forest fire detection system.

Re:Use GPS

[digitalchinky]

No need to turn up the sensitivity at all. SBIRS / STSS has been around since the 70's or 80's - these (optical / IR) satellites search for ballistic missile launches and track those already in progress. Wildfires and a myriad of other heat sources would logically be filtered out since they don't represent a military threat, certainly the NRO would whine about it exposing capability, but it seems to me that the USA already has this technology orbiting the earth already. These 3 letter agencies have taken a lot more than they've given back, maybe it's time to shift focus and put some of this hardware to better use.

Re:Use GPS

[penix1]

certainly the NRO would whine about it exposing capability

"But...But... They will see the big board!" -- General 'Buck' Turgidson (George C. Scott)

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0003295/bio

12 square meters?

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet there's some existing satellites with even better resolution and heat detection capabilities than that... but they're off-limits to the national park service and other forest/wildlife agencies......

Import the Rhinocerous.

[TheRealHocusLocus]

The rhino would provide valuable partner to achieve wildfire control in forested and urban settings. This species would quickly achieve a comfortable equilibrium with humans, and would be far less invasive than, say, Red Box vending machines.

Fire protection demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ81dcD1N8s

Working with humans: assisting in tree-climbing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNUUKirMfVM

Stop stopping fires

[Tailhook]

It's supposed to burn.

Don't turn this simple, natural reality into a problem by preventing fires until you have a giant pile of fuel that inevitably erupts into a biblical disaster.

Since it's supposed to burn, we don't need early detection to make putting it out easier. So put away the satellites; the Department of the Interior can just not expand by another $63 kabillion in the name of "fighting" forest fires with a space program so they can "respond" to the site of some hapless rural leaf burner with a squad of jack-booted enviro-thugs.

Sorry if your vision of the perfect home is a mountain mcmasion embedded in a sylvan paradise. That's just how it is here on Earth where wood eventually burns. Clear the perimeter or risk losing it to the next natural and necessary forest fire.

"They" won't let you clear the perimeter to protect your property? Enviro-statists suck; stop voting for them. "They" banned controlled burns and other forest management? Enviro-statists suck; stop voting for them.

Re:Stop stopping fires

[Livius]

People who run parks are professionals who know this.

The goal is to manage forest fires, not ignore them.

Re:Stop stopping fires

[TapeCutter]

Pull your fat head in mate, because you don't have a fucking clue what you are talking about. Here in Australia the bush can burn to the ground one year and do the same fucking thing the next, there's this season in between called spring where if it's a wet year it all grows back in THREE MONTHS. Large parts of the black Saturday fires had burned the previous season and had been deliberate burnt again in early spring, yet we still had a firestorm strong enough to melt windscreens and engine blocks. And no we're not talking about people sitting on top of a tree covered mountain, the most damaging and deadly fires occur in the outer suburbs of major cities such as Melbourne, Athens, and Los Angeles.

NOBODY, especially environmentalists, have "banned controlled burns" anywhere on the planet, that's just some lunatic tea party bullshit that makes your puny brain feel good about itself. In fact over here "environmentalists" have been instrumental in getting the experience of 40kyrs of native fire control practice recognised and at least three states now employ natives to teach and practice it.

the site of some hapless rural leaf burner with a squad of jack-booted enviro-thugs

Seems to me your the only one who wants to "kick heads". And really, what the fuck has bushfire control got to do with someone burning a pile of leaves in their yard?

Re:Stop stopping fires

[sribe]

I can see both sides of a controlled burn. Yes, it is probably the right thing to do. But the first time it got out of control and burned a bunch of houses down, the crap would hit the fan. Can you imagine the news footage of the people who's houses were burned down by a fire set intentionally by the government.

Colorado residents do not have to imagine this; we lived it this year. Homes destroyed, people dead, because the state forest service ignored its own guidelines for setting and monitoring controlled burns.

Hint: you defer the controlled burn when winds are predicted to be gusting to 60-80 m/h in the days after the burn.

Hint: when guidelines call for you to have personnel monitoring the burn site for a certain period afterward, you have the people up there at least most of the time; you do not leave it unattended for days.

Hint: when guidelines call for the personnel you send to take a source of water (in other words, small tank truck) with them, you do not send two guys in a pickup with shovels.

Hint: when guidelines say it is time to call in an emergency, and there's no phone or radio service, the two guys should abandon their shovels long enough to get to where they can call, rather than continuing to beat at individual hot spots in a gradually losing race until the thing explodes.

Whether or not they learned these lessons, we do not know, because of course the bureaucrats went into full-on defensive mode and refused to admit error, refused to out who it was that made the catastrophic decisions, and so on.

Re:Stop stopping fires

[sribe]

NOBODY, especially environmentalists, have "banned controlled burns" anywhere on the planet, that's just some lunatic tea party bullshit that makes your puny brain feel good about itself. In fact over here...

Actually, over here, the US Forest Service pursued a policy of 100% fire suppression, never letting anything burn if they could stop it, for 50 fucking years. Whether or not environmentalists had any role in this, I do not know. But environmentalists have had a significant role in blocking the type of selective logging, "patch clear-cutting", which is what we need to reduce the danger and start to restore a healthy balance in western forests.

So, I'm glad that your environmentalists have played such a role in your country. But that doesn't mean ours are not idiots, and in fact on this subject most of ours are uninformed idiots.

Re:Holistic Wild Fire Ecology

[Mysticalfruit]

I was wondering the same thing... part of the reason we're in the mess we're currently in is that for the last 30+ years instead of letting fires burn in a controlled way we've just prevented them entirely.

Now we've got land that's just choked with burnable material just waiting for a spark.

I'm all for building such a satellite and launching it but I think that it should be part of a larger strategy surrounding responsible fire management, not just prevention.