I worked on this project recently with Haoyu Li at Clark University. Vandenberg Air Force Base had a quick burning fire pass by one of its rocket launch pads this past September. The fire started by an unknown source in the hills behind the launchpad and at its peak had over 1,000 fire fighters working to contain the fire. We used Landsat 8 for Pre and Post fire imagery, classification, and for NBR. We created training sites and used Maximum Likelihood Classification.
Pre Fire: Oct 1, 2015 Landsat 8
Post Fire: Oct. 3, 2016 Landsat 8
Pre Fire Maximum Likelihood Classification
Post Fire Maximum Likelihood Classification
Normalized Burn Ratio or NBR
Landsat
8 uses bands 5 and 7
Here is an example of false color imagery, can you see how the Indian pictograph stands out a little more when viewed with a false color filter? Different colors are simply being defined differently, but it is a tool remote sensing specialist use to help identify patterns or features that we may not otherwise have noticed.
Pictograph was created about 1000 AD by Fremont Indians in N Utah
The drought in California has been drying up reservoirs across the state over the last few years. This year was predicted to have a large El Nino effect this winter and spring, but it has not produced as much as hoped. Until earlier this month it had been a typical, almost average winter with snow levels averaging around 90% across the state of California. Over the last few weeks several rain and snow storms have passed through Northern California helping Lake Shasta rise to 86% capacity with over 1.8 million acre-feet of water pouring in since the middle of January. El Nino has been very kind to Northern California as of late and we hope it will continue! Check out the slider below to see the difference between water levels at Lake Shasta from last August and its current condition.
As a local to the Wasatch Front I spend a lot of time sailing, birding, and floating on the Great Salt Lake. As a Remote Sensing Specialist I also regularly use Sentinel imagery to study our earth. Sentinel is the ESA equivalent to Landsat. I am currently working on a project that highlights the health hazards of an expanding dry lake bed from the potential dust storms. As the lake gets lower the more dry lake bed is exposed and more dust is kicked up into the air. It is to the benefit of the people of the Wasatch Front to keep that lake wet. I love this video because it highlights just a few of my favorite things. Check it out for some info on the features and history of the Great Salt Lake, the Salt Lake Valley, as well as showing off Sentinel's impressive imagery.
If you are interested in learning more about the Great Salt Lake, here is a whitepaper published by Utah State University last week about the challenges posed by diverting flow to the GSL and the hazards associated with lower Great Salt Lake.
And if that isn't enough and you want to learn even more about the GSL, let me know, I have enough research to keep you busy for days.
This visualization illustrates Earth’s long-term warming trend, showing temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling five-year average. Orange colors represent temperatures that are warmer than the 1951-80 baseline average, and blues represent temperatures cooler than the baseline. Credits: GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio
It turns out 2015 was the warmest year yet according to NASA and NOAA! It edged out 2014 (the last record holder) by 0.23° Fahrenheit (0.13° Celsius). This continues a warming trend over the last 35 years but with 15 of the warmest years happening since 2001. NASA used surface temperature measurements from 6,300 weather stations located across the globe to create a global average surface temperature.
Since consistent records started being kept in 1880, the planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.8° Fahrenheit (1.0° Celsius). With temperatures rising due to carbon and other gas emissions it reinforces the need for change. With the recent Paris Climate Agreement hopefully the world can work work together to accomplish its aims of keeping global warming below 3.6° Fahrenheit (2.0° Celsius).
I took a walk today at work (I work at a public school district bus depot) and found some great examples of constructive interference. What is constructive interference you might ask? Well, it's responsible for all the colors you are seeing in the water from the pictures above. The water has oil in it which causes it to be iridescent. The oil in the water creates a thin film that is reflecting light not only once, but twice! Once on the top layer of the oil and once on the bottom layer of the oil.
When the two waves are in alignment, the amplitude increases creating constructive interference. As different wavelengths of light hit the oil, they cause varying levels of constructive interference which produces all the colors that we see. So next time you see this occur you can shout to world, "Aha! The beauty of constructive interference!"
Source: Philip Dennison's 2013 Environmental Optics Course Reader
