Producing stories and graphics with forest fire information is one of the most interesting applications that journalists can do using the satellites information. The slideshow you see above was very simple to do. I just colect all the fire alerts that Fire Information Resources Management System (FIRMS) send everyday on my email. Once you get in the website you can sign for a newsletter with your area of interested and they send you all the fire spots registered.
The FIRMS is done by the University of Maryland, a well known center of geo-technologies which work with NASA and a lot other institutions. One thing that helps me a lot on their website is Web Fire Mapper. It is pretty good deal for finding stories if you just ask to see the latest fire spots with the Protected Areas Layer. Go to the right hand side, click on ‘Layers’ and choose ‘Protected Areas’. You might see, if you live in tropical country like Brazil that, protected areas has been very much affected by fire.
And finally, do not forget testing the data on Google Earth. Just go the Web Mapping Services and choose ‘KML/Google Earth`. Once again you can choose the fire spots by region. Download the KML file (suitable for opening in Google Earth) and once it is open in you computer, try to cross the information. See which cities are close to the fire. Or even more interesting just import some protected area limits and see how they burned lately. Next post I will show where to get parks and reserves on KML format very easily.
If you interested on using geographical tools in your stories or in your projects, I think Google Maps is effective and easy way of doing it. The only thing you need really is to create an account in Google, which does not harm so much. Once you are able to log in on Maps website, you choose the option of creating a new map and then you just have to put some place marks where you want you readers to have look at.
The example bellow shows how I am editing the map of forest fires in Brazil. Once I get the location of the fires (subject for a following post) I put a place mark there and add some picture and links.
After that, if you go the right side where is the word “Link”, you can get the URL for embed the map in your website. That what we are doing at O Eco. See here.
Beyond that, you can use your skills on design and mix your map with Flash. Well take I look on this storie me and my good friend Aldem Bourscheit created after doing a two day trekking on the southeastern mountains of Brazil. We took pictures and place then on the points we spoted on GPS. Then we just put it over the Google Maps and our skillfully designer, PA Vieira, mashed with Flash. Just click here for the whole storie.
To finalize. It is also nice using Google Maps with a lot of people editing togheter. When you create your own map just click on the “Collaborate” button and invite other people to plaice some data there.
I am myself inviting everybody who wants to participate in the GeoNewsMap . The idea is just send me an email and then you will be able to edit the map and geotag the news and the content you want other people to see. Let`s try.
