Border April 18, 2016
Grasslands made lush by summer rains in 2015 have turned into a tinderbox along the Kansas-Oklahoma border after a dry winter and gusty spring winds transformed the withering vegetation into fire fuel.
The latest in a season of wildfires is the 350 Complex Fire near Freedom, OK, just south of the Kansas border and south of the Cimarron River. On April 5, 2016, four fires sparked by downed power lines merged into one and burned almost 57,500 acres in three days. In late March, the Anderson Creek Fire—the largest blaze ever in Kansas—started in Oklahoma and spread into Kansas, burning almost 400,000 acres.
Using shortwave infrared, near infrared, and visible bands, these Landsat images provide a before and after look at the 350 Complex and Anderson Creek fires. In the March 14 image acquired by Landsat 8, a minor scar from an earlier fire appears orange in the lower left corner. The fan-shaped blue and black object at the center right edge of the image is the Great Salt Plains Lake and Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.
On April 7, Landsat 7 captured the large, brilliant red burn scars caused by the fires.
As of April 8, the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID, reported that 817,480 acres had burned year-to-date across the country, the largest tally in that time frame since 2006.
In the United States, barrier beaches and spits line up along nearly a quarter of the country’s coasts, mostly facing the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Spits are like islands that connect to a mainland at one end.
These barrier systems protect their adjacent mainlands from the full fury of ocean wind and wave energy. They promote critical marsh and wetland habitats. They are living landscapes that grow, shrink, and migrate over time.
These images of the southeastern elbow of Cape Cod capture the impact of natural forces that have raised up, shifted, and torn down the Nauset-Monomoy coastal barrier system. In the June 1984 scene acquired by Landsat 5, an unbroken barrier spit protects the Atlantic-facing coast of Chatham, MA, and its harbor. South of the mainland, North and South Monomoy Islands stand apart from each other and the coast.
Thirty-one years later, Landsat 8 reveals a landscape reshaped by the natural ebb and flow of waves, currents, winds, and tides. The changes are both subtle and substantial. Storms have breached the barrier spit in several places. By September 2015, the Monomoy islands have grown together. At the same time, waters around North Monomoy are shallower with sandbars and shoals closer to the water surface.
Time and the forces of nature will continue this reshaping of the barrier system. As they do, Landsat’s continuous monitoring will be there to document it.
Landsat Helps Battle Pine Beetle Hordes April 4, 2016
At the size of a grain of rice, the mountain pine beetle’s subtle assault on America’s forests isn’t always obvious to the naked eye. Yet over time, their armies of thousands can ravage entire mountainsides. That’s why the continuous monitoring abilities of Landsat satellites have become so important in fighting the insect hordes.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) decision in 2008 to make what is now 44 years of archived satellite data free for distribution gave rise to time-series imagery that has become a powerful tool in revealing forest change. Landsat’s no-cost access gives forest managers an important and economical asset in discerning where outbreaks are happening as they occur. That knowledge in turn enables them to make more informed decisions on thinning tree stands affected by beetles, thus minimizing the potential fire threat they pose.
The value of continuous monitoring is readily apparent in these images. In August 1992, Landsat 5 focused on a swath of the Uinta Mountains just east of Salt Lake City, Utah. The shades of dark green indicate areas of healthier undisturbed forest. Almost exactly 18 years later, Landsat 5 found something much different—dark red stains readily visible throughout the image that tell a story of widespread pine beetle d