Which sensors are currently being used to provide information about forest fires in Canada?
• Thermal infrared scanners flown on board aircraft are often used to map fire hotspots and fire intensity over individual fires or small regions. This information allows fire management agencies to effectively target fire suppression efforts by water bombers and ground attack crews. • The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) is the most commonly used satellite sensor for detecting fires over large regions or entire countries. It can provide a daily snapshot of Canada at a 1-km nominal resolution in five spectral channels. AVHRR is used by Fire M3 for daily forest fire detection over Canada. • The Satellite Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) Vegetation (VGT) sensor, launched in 1998, has four channels that measure reflected energy from Earth. Like AVHRR, VGT provides daily coverage of Canada at a 1-km resolution. Because it lacks thermal channels, the sensor is not as well suited to detecting active fires as AVHRR. Ho
