Remote Sensing of Wildfires

Minutes

On February 7, 2025, Members of the Society and guests joined the speakers for a reception and dinner at 5:45 PM in the Members’ Dining Room at the Cosmos Club. Thereafter they joined other attendees in the Powell Auditorium for the lecture proceedings. In the Powell Auditorium of the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., President Larry Millstein called the lecture portion of the 2,509th meeting of the Society to order at 8:05 p.m. ET. He began by welcoming attendees, thanking sponsors for their support and announcing new members. Scott Mathews then read the minutes of the previous meeting which included the lecture by Scott Wolk, titled “Highlights of the X-Ray Universe: Chandra’s 25 Years of Observations and More to Come”. The minutes were approved as read.

President Millstein then introduced the speakers for the evening, Michael Falkowski, of NASA’s Wildland Fires Program, and Michael Seablom, of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Their lecture was titled “Remote Sensing of Wildfires”.

The first speaker was Michael Seablom. He began by saying that the long-term monitoring of the Earth is of critical importance. As an example, he showed a video depicting the annual minimum Arctic sea ice, as measured from space, from 1975 to the present. He claimed that Artic sea ice in the summer could be completely gone by 2040. He described the four “elements” of NASA’s Earth Science Division: Flight, Research & Analysis, Earth Action, and Technology. Seablom showed a graphic of the “Earth Fleet”: all of NASA’s Earth observing satellites: past, present, and planned. This included 33 separate missions, some with multiple spacecraft, 7 ISS instrument packages, 6 CubeSat projects, and 4 JPSS instruments.

Seablom then gave details about several specific missions. He began with the PACE mission, showing images of phytoplankton and aerosols in the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. He showed hyperspectral images of Florida, before and after Hurricane Helene, demonstrating the upwelling of sediment and plankton resulting from the storm. Seablom showed data from SWOT: Surface Water Ocean Topology. He indicated that these data will enhance our understanding of small-scale ocean circulation, hydrological cycles, and fresh water management.

Seablom then discussed the process by which these programs evolve from concept to a final mission. As an example, he gave details of the PACE mission, beginning in 2008 with the ORCA instrument, through the development of a compact, hyperspectral imaging telescope, to the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP2), to the set of instruments ultimately deployed on PACE. Seablom gave similar details about the development of the technology for the SWOT mission, including the Advanced Altimeter for Ocean Science in 1998, the development of a Ka-band radar interferometer in 2007, the multi-frequency antennae and receiver/downconverter, and finally AirSWOT, a synthetic aperture, Ka-band, radar interferometer, flown in a Beechcraft King Air.

Seablom then discussed future research areas for ESTO (NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office). These included: lasers, passive microwaves, passive optics, radars, quantum sensing, and metamaterials. He described the use of quantum gravity gradiometers to measure terrestrial ground water storage, ice sheet mass change, glacial isostatic adjustment, and groundwater flux. Seablom ended his portion of the lecture by discussing the roles of modeling, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in Earth science.

The remainder of the lecture was presented by Michael Falkowski. He began by saying that he had spent several years trying to figure out how best to use Earth observation data to support a wide variety of resource management issues, including fighting wildland fires. He showed an animation of NASA’s Earth Observation Fleet, indicating that there are approximately 25 or 30 missions with spacecraft currently in orbit. Falkowski said that wildland fire management not only involves monitoring active fires, but also includes monitoring factors in the “pre-fire” and “post-fire” environments. He showed several animations of data acquired by NASA satellites, including: one year in the global fire life cycle, carbon monoxide levels from the Canadian wildfires in 2023, and the progression of a wildland fire in California in 2021. He showed several graphics which indicated increases in the number of wildfires, the land-area affected by these fires, and the intensity of the fires, over the past several decades.

Falkowski then discussed the increase in extreme fire events. He indicated that dry conditions and high winds create what he called “fast fires”, which have been responsible for as much as 78% of the structures lost to fire in a given year. He discussed the Paradise fires in California in 2018, saying that post-fire analysis indicated that most of the vegetation did not burn, and that the houses themselves were the primary fuel. He showed examples of houses which survived these fires, saying that the homeowners took several preventative actions to decrease fire risk, including: installing metal roofs, moving vegetation away from the house, and using noncombustible materials such as gravel and concrete.

Falkowski then discussed proactive wildland fire management. Specifically, he mentioned: building resilient communities, forest thinning, prescribed burns, and restoring ecosystems. He claimed that while some wildland ecosystems suffer long-term damage from fires, some have evolved to withstand occasional fires, and even benefit from them.

And finally, Falkowski discussed the overall mission of NASA’s Wildland Fires Program: investing in foundational technologies, studying Earth systems, conducting applied research, and transitioning mature technologies to fire management agencies. As a specific example, Falkowski discussed the development and deployment of the “FireSense” program, which includes: airborne radar, thermal imaging, spectroscopic imaging, unmanned aerial systems, and prescribed burns coordinated between NASA, NOAA, and USFS (United States Forest Service).

The lecture was followed by a Question and Answer session.

A guest asked if there would be more high-wind fires or fire tornados in the future. Falkowski responded, “Yes. We expect to see what we saw in LA recently, again, and potentially more frequently.”

A guest on the live stream asked if it was time to stop building houses out of materials like wood, shingles, plastic, and foam. Falkowski responded that materials play a big role in reducing fire risk, but that metal roofs, moving vegetation away from homes, and something as simple as placing a screen over the eves can make a big difference.

A member asked whether more frequent overflights would provide more fire predictive data. Falkowski responded that more frequent observations would be “game changing” for fire modeling.

After the question and answer period, President Millstein thanked the speakers and presented them with PSW rosettes, signed copies of the announcement of the talk, and signed copies of Volume 17 of the PSW Bulletin. He then announced speakers of up-coming lectures, made a number of housekeeping announcements, and invited guests to join the Society. He adjourned the 2,509th meeting of the society at 10:02 pm ET.

Temperature in Washington, DC: 5° Celsius
Weather: Fair
Audience in the Powell auditorium: 54
Viewers on the live stream: 23
For a total of 77 viewers
Views of the video in the first two weeks: 207

Respectfully submitted, Scott Mathews: Recording Secretary