Exploring North Carolina’s Lookout Towers: A Guide to Hikes and Vistas

by Tawanda Manyangadze (Author)

Remote sensing has been widely used in active forest fire detection; however there are some limitations in the operational contextual algorithms. These algorithms are greatly affected by clouds and different land cover types such as land and water with inherent temperatures. This book, therefore, provides a new multi-temporal threshold algorithm for near real-time forest fire detection using geostationary satellites, supplemental to the existing algorithms. This algorithm is based on temperature in IR3.9 channel and the difference between IR3.9 and IR10.8 channels. The multi-temporal threshold algorithm proved to have higher fire detection rate (50%) as compared to MSG FIR-G (3.7%) when ground data from Portugal was used for validation. This superiority was also confirmed over Southern Africa when MODIS fire product was used for validation. This analysis shows the possibility of manipulating the temporal domain of geostationary satellites in monitoring highly temporal environmental phenomenon. This algorithm could be especially useful to professionals in forest fire management, or anyone else who may be interested in applying geostationary satellites in environmental monitoring.

by Ira Spring (Author), Byron Fish (Author)

* History of 75 fire-protection lookouts * More than 200 photos from archival and personal collections * Selected access information Once the most advanced means of fire detection, the fire-protection lookout towers built and manned in the mid- to late-1900s in Washington state are now historic sites and an intrinsic part of the heritage of the Northwest and its people. Lookouts: Firewatchers of the Cascades and Olympics is a complete history of the lookouts and a tribute to the people who often endured challenging conditionsñfrom loneliness to forbidding weatherñwhile serving as firewatchers. Authors Ira Spring and Byron Fish paint a vivid picture of each lookout tower in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Mount Rainier National Park, the Olympics, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Wenatchee National Forest, and Okanogan National Forest, and provide inspirational personal anecdotes from the people who manned and worked to preserve these buildings. This edition includes appendixes that provide driving and hiking directions to selected lookouts, information on volunteer organizations active in preserving lookouts, and a historical registry of western Washington lookouts.