Tutorial on the usage of AIT MODIS Fire Monitoring Systems (Regional Level)

Tutorial on the usage of AIT MODIS Fire Monitoring Systems (Regional Level)
Created on Sat December 4 19:46:09 ICT 2010, vivarad@ait.ac.th The purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate the usage of the Near RealTime MODIS Fire System developed by Geoinformatics Center, Asian Institute of Technology to the users who are interested to apply the information from the system to their activities related to the thermal anomalies and biomass burning (forest fire, bush fire, etc.) in their respected countries. This tutorial is related to the usage of the system in regional level which covers South and Southeast Asian countries: The Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia (Kalimantan, Sumatra and Java), Malaysia (Malaya and Sarawak), Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Southern part of China Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, India and Sri Lanka. Prior to start the practice described in this tutorial guidance, a brief theoretical background related to the fire detection using MODIS data available in the paper by Giglio et al., 2003 will be given in the next paragraph. Theoretical Background of Thermal Anomaly and Detection Algorithm Active Fire Detection using MODIS imagery The algorithm uses brightness temperatures derived from the MODIS 4and 11Am channels, denoted by T4 and T11, respectively. The MODIS instrument has two 4m channels, numbered 21 and 22, both of which are used by the detection algorithm. Channel 21 saturates at nearly 500 K; channel 22 saturates at 331 K. Since the lowsaturation channel (22) is less noisy and has a smaller quantization error, T4 is derived from this channel whenever possible. However, when channel 22 saturates or has missing data, it is replaced with the high saturation channel to derive T4. T11 is computed from the 11m channel (channel 31), which saturates at approximately 400 K for the Terra MODIS and 340 K for the Aqua MODIS. The 12m channel (channel 32) is used for cloud masking; brightness temperatures for this channel are denoted by T12. The 250m resolution red and nearinfrared channels, aggregated to 1 km, are used to reject false alarms and mask clouds. These reflectances are denoted by 0.65 and 0.86, respectively. The 500m 2.1m band, also aggregated to 1 km, is used to reject waterinduced false alarms; the reflectance in this channel is denoted by 2.1. A summary of all MODIS bands used in the algorithm is shown in Table 1 and the description of the fire detection algorithm is given in Table 2 in the next pages. Apart from this, the paper introduces a number of algorithms which are used for particular regions to eliminate false alarms caused by sun glint, hot desert surfaces, and coast or shorelines

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Table 1 Summary of all MODIS bands used in the fire detection algorithm

Table 2 Description of the fire detection algorithm There are other issues to be considered in fire detection algorithms as following: 1. Cloud detection and scan angle check The presence of clouds is determined using the MODIS cloud mask scheme. Scan angle cutoff is enforced to limit problems at extreme view angles. 2. Atmospheric correction Apparent temperatures T4 and T11 are corrected for gaseous and water vapor absorption 3. Background characterization Relationship between the examined pixel and its surrounding pixelshe apparent temperatures of is established 4. Glint exclusion Exclude a fire pixel during the day if it corresponds to glint measurements

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MODIS Fire Information System for South and Southeast Asia (Regional Level) Go to the website of MODIS Fire Information System for South and Southeast Asia by the URL: http://www.geoinfo.ait.ac.th/mod14/ (see Figure 1) On the web page, there are three main sections: 1. MODIS Fire Product Generation System 2. MODIS Fire Visualization System 3. MODIS Fire Database and Statistical Analysis System The details of these sections are explained on in the brief description of each section, that can be found on the same web page. Next, we will demonstrate how to use the fire information in these sections. We will start with the first section MODIS Fire Product Generation System. Figure 1

Section 1. MODIS Fire Product Generation System Scroll down the web page to section 1 which has the title of MODIS Fire Product Generation System and click on the image below (Figure 2) After clicking on the image, it will bring us to the new web page of yearly fire information detected by MODIS. The fire information of the year is organized in calendarlike which is easy to users to look for the fire information in the particular date. In our case, the calendar is the fire information for the year of 2010, which can be identified by the title MODIS Fire Product (MOD14) Catalogue 2010. To view the fire information of other year, just click on the year, which are horizontally listed under the page title. Figure 2 To view the fire information of particular month, just click on the month of the months which are horizontally listed under the list of the years. To view the fire information for a particular date, just click on the date listed in the calendar (Figure 3).

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Web page title

List of the years

List of the month for the specific year

Fire information for a particular date

Figure 3 For example, we want to see the fire information details for March 11, 2007, we will click on 2007 to go to the yearly MODIS fire information of 2007 which has the title of MODIS Fire Product(MOD14) Catalogue 2007, then click on March and 11 as shown in the Figure 4 below.

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Click on 11 inside the calendar of March 2007 to view the MODIS fire information of the particular date.

Figure 4 After clicking by the steps explained as above, the new web page will appear as shown in Figure 4 on the next page. In the web page, the fire information is classified according to the MODIS image scenes received at different time of March 11, 2007 from morning to late night. In our case, we can see that the list of first MODIS image starts with the image acquired at 03:55 GMT, then 05:22 GMT following by 06:59 and so on. The last image on the bottom of this web page is the image acquired at 19:12 GMT. The number of MODIS images acquired in total for March 11, 2007 is 7 images or scenes. The availability of fire information in different time depends on the flight schedule of Terra and Aqua satellites on the particular geographical area. Lets take an example of MODIS fire information details acquired at 03:55 GMT to see what are the details that the process has generated for this particular time of this date (Figure 5).

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Details of Fire information detected by MODIS at the particular time (03:55 GMT) of March 11, 2007.

Figure 5

Figure 4

p q s
Figure 6

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The explanation for the MODIS fire details showing in Figure 6 can be described as following: n Base map of the geographical area, acquired by Terra MODIS at 03:55 GMT of March 11, 2007. In this base map, the active fire pixels with different fire confidence levels are overlayed to show the fire distribution at the particular time. The fire confidence level are classified in three levels: low (030%), nominal (3170%) and high (71100%). The fire confidence shows the confidence in fire detection by MODIS sensor which is calculated using NASA MODIS Fire algorithm or MOD14. On the map, high, nominal and low confidence pixels are symbolized by red, orange and yellow squares, respectively. o The total number of active fire pixels or hotspot detected by MODIS at 03:55GMT of March 11, 2007 which is 809 pixels and classified into three confidential levels which are high confidence (395 pixels), nominal (387 pixels) and low (27 pixels). p The details of all 809 active fire pixels can be viewed in a table which is stored in a text file and can be downloaded by clicking at the link named list. In this case, the text file named MOD14.200703110355Terra.txt will be downloaded and it can be viewed using any text editor software. Figure 7 shows the content of the file MOD14.200703110355Terra.txt.

Figure 7 The fire information in file MOD14.200703110355Terra.txt are classified in nine columns which can be listed as following: Column 1st : X image coordinate of the active fire pixel Column 2nd : Y image coordinate of the active fire pixel

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Column 3rd : geographical latitude of the active fire pixel Column 4th : geographical longitude of the active fire pixel Column 5th : reflectance value defined by band 2 (NIR) Column 6th : brightness temperature of fire pixel defined by band 21 Column 7th : brightness temperature of fire pixel defined by band 31 Column 8th : Fire power estimated from fire pixel (Watt/m) Column 9th : Fire confidence of the fire pixel Here in this text file, there are totally 809 rows which is equal to the total number of active fire pixels detected by MODIS at 03:55 GMT of March 11, 2007. q Quick look of MODIS image. This quick look shows the full scene of MODIS image received at 03:55 GMT of March 11, 2007, and this image was used to be input data to generate fire information (see Figure 8)

Figure 8

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r The active fire pixels are not only stored in a table of in text format as explained in p, but it is also stored in KML format which is able to view in Google Earth. Just rightclick the link Visualization:[Google Earth KML] to save the KML file named MOD14.200703110355Terra.kml to the computer. We will see a KML file displayed with Google Earth icon as shown in Figure 8. To view the active fire information on Google Earth, just doubleclick on the Google Earth icon and just wait a few minutes, the system will bring us to the right location in Google Earth. Please note that Google Earth should be installed in the computer in order to display this information.

Figure 9 The result can be seen in Figure 10, which shows the distributions of active fire pixels on Google Earth. Each fire pixel is displayed with fire confidence value (in percentage) and corresponding color. Using the advantage of Google Earth, we can zoomin and out to view the fire pixel and the background of the surrounding area where the particular fire pixels are located as shown in Figure 11. Select an interested active fire pixel, and click on it to view the active fire pixel information related to geographic location in lat/lon and the fire confidence in percentage (Figure 12).

Figure 10

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Figure 11

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Figure 13

s The distribution of active fire is also displayed in statistical format, i.e in table and histogram. The table contains the total number of active fire pixels by country available in the MODIS coverage of our ground receiving station. The active fire pixels information are classified in high (1st column), nominal (2nd column) and low (3rd column) fire confidence. The 4th column is the corresponding country (See Figure 13). This table is in stored in text file format, named as MOD14.200703110355Terra.sta which can be downloaded and viewed by any text editor software. The information shown in Table as shown in Figure 12 is displayed in graphic format in the form of histogram which is easy to view the distribution of active fire pixels by country (see Figure 14). Click on the link [Table] and [Graph] to access or download the table and the histogram, respectively.

Figure 14 This is the end of the Section 1. In the next section, we will demonstrate how to visualize the active fire phenomenon using active fire information and real time MODIS true color image.

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Section 2. MODIS Fire Visualization System In this Section, we will demonstrate how to visualize the active fire phenomenon in particular geographical area and specific date in Google Earth. In this case, we will demonstrate for the case of Southeast Asia in March 11, 2007, which the active fire pixels were detected at 06:59GMT. The data to be used for the visualization can be listed as following: Active fire pixels in KML format MODIS image in true color with the spatial resolution of 250m in KML format

Step 1: Download the Active fire pixels in KML format of March 11, 2007, detected at 06:59 GMT. To do this, we can follow the steps, explained in page 2 and 3 of this tutorial to access to the fire information web page of March 11, 2007 and scroll down to the 3rd MODIS image of the date which is shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15 Step 2: RightClick on link Visualization:[Google Earth KML] to download the KML file MOD14.200703110659Aqua.KML to the computer. Step 3: DoubleClick on the KML file to view the active fire pixels on Google Earth as shown in Figure 16. In Google Earth, zoomin to any area of interest, for example, we will zoomin to the Northern part of Laos where has high amount of active fire distribution. We will visualize the active fire phenomenon in this part of the country by downloading the true color MODIS image of this area.

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Figure 16

Step 4: To download the true color MODIS image, go back to the main page of AIT MODIS Fire Information System or can be access by this URL link http://www.geoinfo.ait.ac.th/mod14/ and scroll down the page to Section 2 MODIS Fire Visualization System. Click on the image thumbnail shown in Figure 18 to access to new page of MODIS Fire Visualization System in which it will bring to the latest year of 2010. Therefore, the new web page with the title of MODIS True Color Visualization Catalogue 2010 will appear (see Figure 19).

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Figure 17

Figure 18 14 of 28
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Figure 19 In this page, we will download the MODIS image of true color in 250m spatial resolution for the date of March 11, 2007 at 06:59 GMT. Just click at year 2007, then the new page with the title MODIS True Color Visualization Catalogue 2007, Just scroll down the calendar to the month of March and click on the date 11, and the new page will appear as shown in Figure 20. This page contains the MODIS images in true color which were generated from MODIS daytime images only. Therefore, we can see only three images in this page. Scroll down to the 3rd image to find the image with title Scene 3 Aqua MODIS March 11, 2007 06:59 GMT and click on the image. The new page with the image of bigger size will appear as shown in Figure 21. The whole image of the full scene is subdivided into different subsets of image in JPG format and embedded in KML format that can be displayed in Google Earth. Each subset has the width of 4,400 pixels and height of 3,400 pixels. Each pixel has the spatial resolution of 250m. Download the subset which is corresponding to the area of interest that located in the Northern part of Laos, which is the subset that pointed by a red arrow (see Figure 22). Just rightclick on the image to save as KML file. The KML file of this location will have the name as 200703110659Aqua_21.5320800_99.0843672.kml, where the number 21.5320800 and 99.0843672 denote the latitude and longitude of the center point of the subset.

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Figure 20

Figure 21

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Doubleclick on this file to view the MODIS image in true color of the selected interested area on Google Earth as shown in Figure 22.

Click on this check box to turn on/off the active fire pixels layer

Figure 22

Click on this check box to turn on/off the true color MODIS image subset layer

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Figure 23 In figure 23, the active fire pixels layer is turned off. We can see the background image covered by true color MODIS easily.

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Figure 24 Click on the name of the active fire pixels layer at the sidebar of Google Earth (shown by red arrow) to display the information of the active fire pixels layer (see Figure 24).

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Figure 25. Turn on the both layers of active fire pixels and the MODIS true color image of the interested area, then zoomin to the interested area in Northern part of Laos, we can see the smoke plumes (indicated by red arrows) come out from the group of active fire pixels (see Figure 25 and 26).

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Figure 26.

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Figure 27 We also can turn off or on any of the layers to visualize in different ways. Figure 27 shows an example that we can visualize the distribution of the active fire pixels in the interested area with the high resolution image provided by Google Earth on the background. In this case, we can have better information about the topography of the interested area related to the distribution of the active fire pixels. This will help forest fire protection department officers to set up plan to the forest fire protection and management. It would be very efficient if we could have other GIS data such as provincial, district boundaries, villages locations as well as roads, or land use and land cover, we can overlay these data to Google earth to visualize the fire occurrence in respect to different administrative units and land use/cover types.

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Figure 28 Using the advantage of Google Earth, we can visualize the active fire phenomenon in birdeye view mode as shown in Figure 28. In next section, we will demonstrate how to retrieve the active fire information stored in database for the specific date or period of dates.

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Section 3. MODIS Fire Database and Statistical Analysis System In this section, we will demonstrate how to retrieve the active fire information stored in database for the specific date or period of dates. The fire information detected by MODIS on Terra and Aqua satellites are daily stored in the online database which users can access on the internet. The information is available since July 27, 2006 until presence. This database is useful for the users to know the information of the fire occurrence in the past which can be specified by the particular date or a period of dates and other selected parameters.

Figure 29

To access to the online database, click on the thumbnail shown in Figure 29 and the new page will appear as shown in Figure 30.

Figure 30

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The full instructions to use this database can be found by clicking at the link Instructions or by URL: http://www.geoinfo.ait.ac.th/mod14/mod14_db/help_db_mod14g.php. The user also can follow the offline instruction, which is explained below that is similarly to the online version. STEP 1. Select countries/area of interest In Section 01, select a single country of interest by click on the country name in the list box.

The User can also select a group of countries of interest by holding the SHIFT or CONTROLkey

STEP 2. Select the date period of interest In Section 02, select the period of interest by entering the start and end dates. For example, October 0102, 2006. STEP 3. Select the time period of interest In Section 03, "Satellite Overhead Time" refers to the time in GMT when the satellite is over the ground receiving station. This is equivalent to the data acquisition time in our receiving station. Our data acquisition time ranges from 02:00 to 20:00 GMT which is equivalent to 9:00 AM to 03:00 AM. Therefore, the default range is 02:00 to 20:59 GMT. The user can select the period of data acquisition by entering the start and end times. In most general case, for the convenience, the user can skip this step. STEP 4. Select the daytime or nighttime data In Section 04, "Day/Night Passes" means user can select the data acquisition period related to daytime or nighttime or both. The default value is Day. STEP 5. Select the Fire Reflectance of Band2 In Section 05, select the "Fire Reflectance Band2" by specifying the values of Reflectance of NIR band 2 of the fire pixels. The default values are 1.0 to 1.0. 1.0 for night time.

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STEP 6. Select the Fire Brightness Temperature Band21 In Section 06, select the "Fire Brightness Temperature Band21" by specifying the minimum and maximum values of brightness temperature of band 31 for the fire pixels. The default range is 273 to 400 Kelvin which is equivalent to 0 to 127 Celsius. STEP 7. Select the Fire Brightness Temperature Band31 In Section 07, select the "Fire Brightness Temperature Band31" by specifying the minimum and maximum values of brightness temperature of band 31 for the fire pixels. The default range is 273 to 400 Kelvin which is equivalent to 0 to 127 Celsius. STEP 8. Select the Fire Power In Section 08, select "Fire Power" by specifying the minimum and maximum values of fire power for the fire pixels. The default range is 0 to 400 W/m. STEP 9. Select the Fire Confidence In Section 09, select the "Fire Confidence" by specifying the minimum and maximum values of fire confidence for the fire pixels. The range of High confidence level is 71100% while those of Nominal and Low confidence levels are 3170% and 030%. The default range is 0 to 100 %. STEP 10. Select the Satellite In Section 10, select the "MODIS Platform" by choosing either Terra or Aqua or both. The default value is Terra. STEP 11. Submit the selected information to the system by clicking on "Submit Query". The user can define the number of records that will be displayed in one page. The result will be shown in a new page with the user entry information in "Show User Input Information" and the number of records found in "Show User Query Result" classified into different pages. The user can click on any page number to view the results. Page 67 of 142 of such resulted from such a query which has the total number of 142 result pages is shown below in Figure 31 as an example. A brief explaination on the parameters shown in the table columns is as follows; date = date of data acquisition, time = time of data acquisition, daynight = daytime or nighttime data or both, satellite = the satellite or interest: Terra or Aqua or both, lat = latitude of the found fire pixel, lon = longitude of the found fire pixel, ref2 = band 2 reflectance of fire pixel, T21 = brightness temperature of band 21, T31 = brightness temperature of band 31, Fp = Fire power of fire pixel and country = location of fire occurence.

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Figure 31 We can take the lat/lon value to view in Google Earth, just copy it and paste to the dialog box Fly To of Google Earth (shown by red arrow in Figure 32) and press Enter. Google Earth will bring us to the location, indicated by these geographic coordinates as shown in Figure 32. For example, we select the lat/lon in the first row of the table. The value is 2.44 deg and 112.63 deg. The result can be seen in Figure 33. The table in Figure 31 can be also converted to Excel file format by select all the table, copy and paste it to the new worksheet of Excel.

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Figure 33

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