File:Overwintering Fires on the Rise.jpeg
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Summary
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The images at the top of this page, acquired with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, highlight the progression of a particularly potent overwintering fire in Alaska in 2015-16. The images are false color (OLI bands 7-6-2), which emphasizes hot spots and actively burning fires while distinguishing burned vegetation (brown) from unburned vegetation (green). The first image (top-left), acquired in September 2015, shows the burn scar from the Soda Creek Fire, which scorched nearly 17,000 acres in southwest Alaska near the Kuskokwim River. The fire was never completely extinguished before winter set in. In April 2016 (top-right), the fire continued to smolder in the soil under a layer of snow. When the snow finally melted in late May (bottom-left), the additional heat and oxygen caused flames to re-emerge quickly spread. (The second image on this page shows a natural-color version of this image, overlaid with the shortwave-infrared signature of active fire fronts.) The June 2016 image (bottom-right) outlines new burned area from these overwintered fires, which added nearly 10,000 acres to the previously burned area. The incident was not an isolated case. The study points to numerous fires that overwintered after Alaska’s large fire years of 2009 and 2015, although they can happen after other hot and active fire years, too. “Although our satellite record of these fires in itself is too short to look at long-term trends, we found that the number of fires that overwinter is strongly linked to summer temperatures and large fire seasons,” Scholten said. “And for these we do see a pronounced upward trend—hotter summers and more burned area—with continued climate warming.” |
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| Source | https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148342/overwintering-fires-on-the-rise |
| Author | NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and fire perimeter data from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center (AICC). Story by Kathryn Hansen. |
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This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.) |  |
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| current | 00:14, 25 May 2021 | | 2,372 × 2,045 (1.12 MB) | StellarHalo (talk | contribs) | {{Information |Description=The images at the top of this page, acquired with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, highlight the progression of a particularly potent overwintering fire in Alaska in 2015-16. The images are false color (OLI bands 7-6-2), which emphasizes hot spots and actively burning fires while distinguishing burned vegetation (brown) from unburned vegetation (green). The first image (top-left), acquired in September 2015, shows the burn scar from the Soda Creek Fi... |
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