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 Richard H. Holm Jr. (Author)

Over one hundred years ago with the formation of the United States Forest Service in 1905 the idea of the fire lookout network was born. In the 2.3 million acres of land comprised in today's Payette National Forest over one hundred fire lookout locations were used to protect the forest from fires. Recently only thirteen of those lookouts are in use. After many years of research the history of each fire lookout site is reveled through the stories of people who staffed, stocked, and built them. Also included is a general history of the fire lookout network on the Payette as related to Forest Service fire policy in the four northwestern states. Bringing the text to life is an amazing collection of over 270 black and white photographs of this spectacular region, which extends from the depths of Hells Canyon to the remote Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.