The MODIS Land Rapid Response Project: A Comprehensive Suite of Products to Support U.S.D.A. Forest Service Fire Management

The Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on board the Terra satellite offers exceptional capabilities of observation for terrestrial surfaces. MODIS is viewing almost the entire Earth's surface every day, with a spatial resolution ranging from 1km to 250m, and covering a wide spectral range of observation, from visible to thermal infrared. The unprecedented combination of daily spatial coverage, 250m spatial resolution, and spectral characteristics makes MODIS ideal to observe a variety of rapid events: fires, floods, smoke transport, dust storms, severe storms, volcanic eruptions. A new processing system has been developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to provide a rapid response to those events, with initial emphasis on active fire detection and quasi-true-color 250m-resolution imagery. MODIS data of most of the Earth's land surface is processed within a few hours of data acquisition. A basic atmospheric correction is performed operationally to provide true-color imagery. An operational detection process retrieves the location of active fires. The perimeter of the fires are overlaid on true-color imagery and posted on a web site. A collaboration between NASA, the University of Maryland and the USDA Forest Service has been developed to provide fire information derived from MODIS to the fire managers. Active fire locations detected by MODIS in the conterminous United States are communicated to the USDA Forest Service within a few minutes of production. These active fire locations are used to generate cumulative fire maps, updated daily and made available to the fire managers. Active fire locations are also distributed through a web interface integrating MODIS active fire locations and Geographic Information System (GIS) datasets using GIS technology, as a contribution to the Global Observation of Forest Cover (GOFC) project. Burn severity maps derived from MODIS data are also being developed and will be made available within a few days after the fires to help burned area emergency rehabilitation teams. The design of the MODIS Rapid Response system is presented. The rapid atmospheric correction process and the active fire detection algorithm are described. Examples from the suite of MODIS Rapid Response fire products are presented. Results from the 2001 fire season in the United States are summarized and discussed. Products from the MODIS Rapid Response System can be obtained at http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov.