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.
I have been saying to a lot of people that US’s National Aeronautics and Space Agengy (NASA) are not only good on building rockets. Believe me, the people who put the man on the moon, are doing also good journalism.
Just take a look on the images bellow. These are satellite images from the Artic and show a large ice melting within a short space of time in last august. The whole story can be read on Nasa’s Earth Observatory website.
Huge melting going on
My point here is `This is a tremendous compelling image!’.
But it is not only about image, I must recognize. When you read the full story, you see that good information make the whole thing even better.
I have to tell you that the NASA’s Earth Observatory was kind of a shock to me. These guys are producing amazing information and yet giving us beautiful (free!) images. I signed their newsletters right away and everyweek they are sending amazing material. Specially if you sign up for the Natural Hazards section, you might find a lot of stories to write about only by looking at a map. Try.
I have been reading Arthur C. Clarke and there is no doubt that he was ahead of his time when defending that space research and, more specifically, sattelites are tools of peace. He was writing a couple articles in the middle of the Reagan´s Star Wars, in 1980s, and had foreseen the huge impact that satellites would have on peoples way of working, travelling, producing, talking. Much more important than military use.
Besides, it is nice listening to Clarke remembering us how beautiful can be the pictures took from the outerspace. I would say here that we should also considering how powerfull these images has been on communicating Earth´s most urgent problems.
Take the example of this images bellow. It was obtaneid (for free, it must be stressed) on Nasa’s Earth Observatory.
Forest fire in Los Angeles
This is something that everybody could understand. It is huge forest fire and huge columm of smoke. Does not need translation.
But where the journalism came to forefront? Well, I think that we, journalist, are not taking advantage of having all these free imageries and immense flow of information on Earth events. The interpretation of sattelite images is, so far, seen as duty of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) experts. This is true when we talking about information that is going to lead public policies or some private investment. But we can do a great job interpretating ourselves some of the image and delivering to our public .
