7 July

NEW satellite technology is set to change how fires are detected, monitored and managed across northern Australia. On board the two NASA satellites is an instrument called MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) that can detect fires and hotspots not only at night but also during the day.

Until now fires could be detected mainly at night because the older National and Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites confused fires with heated ground surfaces such as sunlit rocks.

"This new technology will have enormous impact for park rangers, pastoralists and the Bushfires Council of the NT who every year manage thousands of square kilometres that go up in flames and smoke," Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith, of the Tropical Savannas CRC and Bushfires Council of the NT, said.

"MODIS is much more sensitive to temperature than NOAA which enables land managers to spot remote fires more easily during the day, track their direction more frequently and all at a much finer scale."

"With MODIS we can also detect the blackened scars left by fires at a finer scale—down to a few hundred square metres in size whereas with the older satellites we could only detect fire scars that were well over a square kilometre in size."

One of NASA’s principal investigators for MODIS, Dr Christopher Justice, agrees.

"Fire information from these new satellites can be used for improved fire and land management not only in northern Australia but also throughout the world."

"The MODIS fire and thermal instrument has information unique to understanding when and where fires occur and characteristics such as the energy emitted from the fire. Detailed information on fires is critical both in the short and long-term, since fire changes the vegetation cover and releases gases and particles into the atmosphere, thus affecting ecosystems and atmospheric chemistry," he said.

Dr Justice and Dr Russell-Smith addressed the international conference on Fire and Savanna Landscapes in Northern Australia, hosted by the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Savannas Management and the ARC Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management, in Darwin in July.