bushfire
Table of Contents
Mapping Burnt Areas in NSW
Description
This project aims to map burnt areas within NSW in a way that is useful for bushwalkers. When vegetation is burnt in a bushfire, it generally removes scrub and makes the area easier to travel through for a few years. Knowing where these recently burnt areas are can then assist in route planning for bushwalks.
| Resource | Example | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| RFS Fires Near Me | Knowledge of fires occurance | |
| Satellite Imagery | EOS Land Viewer | Identifing extent of burnt area |
| GIS | QGIS | Creating burnt area polygons |
| ??? | ??? | Viewing burnt area polygons |
| NPWS Fire History | ||
| DEA Hotspots | 72 hrs of fire activity |
Process
- Obtain knowledge for bushfire occurrence - both time and location
- RFS Fires Near Me will detail any active fires, with either a point or rough polygon indicating its position
- Looking through old imagery can also lead to burn area identification
- Capture imagery of burn area
- Best done with EOS Land Viewer
- Free service (with some restrictions), account required
- Provides Landsat and Sentinal imagery (only Landsat 8 and Sentinal-2 are of interest)
- Limit of 10 'scenes' per day - these are the big tiles of satellite imagery
- Unlimited downloads of 'scene' data, but resolution reduced to <10mb file
- Provides individual bands, including IR and NIR, along with pre-set band combinations - use Shortwave Infrared
- An alternative is the USGS LandLook
- Free service, no account required
- Also has Landsat and Sentinal imagery
- Unlimited image views and downloads (need to select geotiff format and geographic spatial reference)
- Only provides true-colour images, no use of IR or NIR bands
- Create burn extent polygons
- Load imagery into QGIS and name file as layer in format of “[yyyy-mm-dd of capture] [Area]” for reference
- Add polygon by visually inspecting burn area image and capturing full extent within boundary
- Add field data to polygon such as fire name, area, date of image capture
Examples
An example can be found through the link below, where a geojson file has been imported into an online map. Burnt Areas Map - 20181113
To Do
- Investigate RFS RSS Feed data
- It appears that they supply multiple feeds relating to fires
- Their Current Incidents Feed (GeoJSON) feed appears to be a geojson file of all current fires, which includes points or polygons
- See if it's worth collecting this data on a regular basis (say weekly) and then compiling into one big database for reference and / or later analysis
bushfire.txt · Last modified: 2019/11/13 20:24 by allchin09