INTRODUCTION

(pic soon)

At the Western Summer 2006 Conference of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, I gave a presentation regarding "Remote Sensing Fire from Space" and made the comment that fire lookout towers and fire detection satellites do not duplicate each other despite popular misconception that satellites have lead to the demise of fire lookout towers. I laid down the challenge that no dispatch center has ever been called with  satellite detected fire coordinates.  The day may someday come when that happens, but right now the satellites are doing a very important job of analyzing fire from space, and providing a near real time feedback for strategic fire resource management.  This page is simply a listing of my links that I use to monitor the "Earth on fire".

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is usually in the news for human exploration, or when one of the unmanned missions fail.  Even when it makes the news, a little 45 second story "blip" is all the lip time the media gives.  However, NASA is doing so much to monitor and provide science data to universities and principle investigators (scientists), that many people never hear about amazing discoveries.  Much of this information is available on the Internet, and NASA has done much to try to make data available to the general public.  Below are my favorite Earth Observing Satellites.  You can click on each link to open an external page about each mission.  The second table below is my list of websites that you can use to monitor our home planet.  One warning... what you learn, you can't unlearn.  The Earth is changing despite the cause.  This is your window to the changes.

The Remote Sensing Fire NASA Satellites

	Terra Terra called the "Earth Observation Flagship" for the fleet of many NASA satellites.  Manged by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center with contributions by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA/Langley Research Center.  Terra carries the MODIS instrument.
	Landsat 7 The Landsat series of satellites have specialized in digital photographs of Earth continents and coastal regions.  Since 1972, the Landsat series of satellites are showing us some amazing changes happening to the Earth.  From clear-cutting in the rain forest to ice caps melting.
	Aqua Aqua is the sister to Terra but has even more capability.  At present, it is the lead satellite in the A-Train, a series of satellites that are in close formation following each other about 5 to 15 minutes apart.  Aqua carries the MODIS and ASTER instruments that are used in fire analysis.
	CloudSat CloudSat is not one of the fire service satellites, but I have included it here because I am a fan of this mission.  CloudSat will provide us with a new way of looking "inside" a storm cloud.  We have all seen the horizontal radar image of rain inside a storm, but we have not yet seen the verticle cross section until now.  Should be interesting.

Websites to monitor the Earth from your own computer

	MODIS Rapid Response System Many online maps and near real time MODIS images.
	On Earth - Jet Propulsion Laboratory Easy to use interface of MODIS data that is only 24 hours old.
	Earth Observatory Fantastic site that links to Blue Marble, and the Visible Earth websites.  Highlights Natural Hazards (fire).
	Visible Earth A sub-site of Earth Observatory Many different views from all NASA sources.
	Blue Marble next generation A sub-site of Earth Observatory

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