![]() The true-color image shows that although some of shrubs and trees of this golf course survived the Santa Rosa fire in October, the surrounding homes were burned completely to ashes. This level of detail provides additional insight into the affected areas down to individual homes. The image above provided by the WorldView satellite shows a very high resolution capture of the aftermath of the area fires. Landsat-derived maps are used by specialists and wildlife biologists to assess the burn severity of the land. For example, soil that has been burned is less able to retain water which can lead to increased erosion and potential dangers like landslides. After a fire, these satellite data give insight into how the ecosystem has been transformed. These images allow firefighters to determine how to allocate resources on a localized level in order to save homes and businesses close to the fires. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, uses Landsat satellite data to observe things like vegetation, water and soil changes after a fire. The Remote Sensing Applications Center, operated by the U.S. This zoomed-in view from Landsat 8 shows the heavily burned area between Santa Rosa and Calistoga, where wildfires have torched at least 34,000 acres. These images revealed some of the most prominent wildfires in the area, including the Tubbs fire between Santa Rosa and Calistoga, the Atlas fire near Lake Berryessa, and the Redwood/Potter fires near the Mendocino National Forest. In comparison, the Landsat satellites, which orbit the Earth approximately 15 times per day but take 16 days to capture the whole Earth, took the image above of the same fires in October. The ability to ‘see’ artificial light allows the satellite to capture widespread power outages after a disaster like the wildfires. The VIIRS instrument’s Day-Night Band is also sensitive enough to detect the low levels of visible light at night. 9 combines the satellite’s true color imagery along with thermal imagery (in red) that indicates the hot spots associated with the active fires. ![]() In the image above, data from the VIIRS instrument aboard Suomi NPP from Oct. The VIIRS fire location and temperatures are used in smoke forecast models which are important for predicting how far smoke will spread - which can be hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles and can impact visibility, which is important for aviation safety and air quality. This information is critical in giving emergency teams insight into areas that require evacuation. This gives fire managers an overall view of risk in different locations, helping them quickly decide when and where to allocate their resources. Overnight on October 9th the California fires saw huge growth without much containment. These images were also used to demonstrate how quickly the fires spread. The VIIRS image demonstrates the large scale and dramatic impact of the fires over a significantly large area. The NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite's Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument - also a component of NOAA’s newest polar orbiting satellite NOAA-20 - captured this view of the multiple fires and smoke burning in the area. The area imaged by the satellite during each orbit is called a swath, and NOAA’s polar-orbiting satellites have relatively wide image swaths. To achieve this ‘big picture’ view, NOAA’s satellites are built to see things like storm clouds over vast ocean waters, dust storms over thousands of miles, and changes in ice, surface temperature, vegetation, and sea level. NOAA’s fleet of satellites is designed to survey vast areas of the planet and quickly transmit Earth’s environmental data back to scientists on the ground. NOAA’s fleet of satellites is designed to image the Earth through data sensors that track highly detailed information that provides the basis for 95% of our weather forecasting. Why can’t NOAA’s satellites see someone’s house? Because instead of close-up high-resolution images, our polar-orbiting satellites provide much more frequent coverage (twice daily) over the whole planet in order to understand global weather patterns. Satellites differ greatly in the level of detail they can “see”. NOAA satellites have the capability to provide astounding views of the Earth, but many people want to know if these satellites can see their houses, or even through their roofs and walls to the people inside.
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