[dragonFly]| Quiet Planet

Quiet Planet

The COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting social distancing recommendations and related restrictions have led to numerous short-term changes in economic and social activity around the world, all of which may have impacts on our environment. Your challenge is to use space-based data to document the local to global environmental changes caused by COVID-19 and the associated societal responses.

A Burning Question

Summary

Over 84 percent of U.S. wildland fires have been attributed to human activity (Balch et al.,2017).• Media and the public often focus on wildland fires during periods of increased fire activity; however, periods of reduced fire activity should also be noted to further understand the relationship between fire and its causes.• We see evidence of reduced fire activity in the U.S. in the period following the declaration of the pandemic. • Apps capable of displaying near real time and historical fire datagraphically may be useful for the public as well as policymakers.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We examined freely available NASA FIRMS satellite active fire data and other fire activity drivers (i.e., precipitation and temperature) over a long-term period and compared with COVID-affected year 2020. Results are presented and interpreted graphically.

How We Developed This Project

Media and the public often focus on wildland fires during periods of increased fire activity; however, periods of reduced fire activity should also be noted to further understand the relationship between fire and its causes.

Most space agency data dissemination websites do not show historical or trend data which is useful for ready reference

We used the R open source environment to pre process the data.

Project Demo

Please look at thispresentationwe have put together as a proof of concept.

if the above link does not work please try

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k54iFnExWOj5y6jv8fx1qmF2RSYKh512/view?usp=sharing

Project Code
Data & Resources

Balch, Jennifer K., Bethany A. Bradley, John T. Abatzoglou, R. Chelsea Nagy, Emily J. Fusco, and Adam L. Mahood. "Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 11 (2017): 2946-2951.

Holden, Zachary A., Alan Swanson, Charles H. Luce, W. Matt Jolly, Marco Maneta, Jared W. Oyler, Dyer A. Warren, Russell Parsons, and David Affleck. "Decreasing fire season precipitation increased recent western US forest wildfire activity." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, no. 36 (2018): E8349-E8357.

NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), MODIS Collection 6, Accessed May 30, 2020. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/.

PRISM Climate Group, Annual Data, Accessed May 31, 2020. http://www.prism.oregonstate.edu/.

Tags
#wildland fires, #Human activity, #quietplanet
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.