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• Main Authors: Steven Oldford, Brigitte Leblon, Lisa Gallant, M. E. Alexander
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.222.2355; http://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXIV/part4/pdfpapers/510.pdf

In Canada, fire danger maps are generated daily by the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System from weather station records. Such maps are limited spatially because they are produced from point-source weather measurements. Thus, remote sensing was investigated as an alternative. Thermal infrared NOAA-AVHRR images were used to describe pre-fire conditions of 24 large fires, occurring in 1994 in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Values of daily mean surface temperatures and fire weather index for burned areas were compared with those of surrounding unburned areas during an 11 day period prior to and on the day of fire ignition. It was hypothesized that: (i) mean surface temperature will increase as fire ignition dates approach; (ii) mean surface temperature within burned areas will be greater than within unburned areas; (iii) surface temperature will be positively related to the fire weather index. A positive trend in mean surface temperature was observed as ignition dates approached, but high percentages of cloud contamination made it difficult to follow each fire day to day. Similar trends were observed over unburned areas. A good relationship was found between surface temperatures and fire weather indices. Limitations and possible improvements of this study are also presented. Keywords: NOAA-AVHRR surface temperature, fire weather index, fire danger, Northwest Territories, northern boreal forests 1.