We're here in the sagebrush steppe of Idaho's
Snake River Plain.
This unique ecosystem is home to several sagebrush
species as well as elk, deer, and other mountain
beasts.
The steppe is also important to Idahoans,
what with grazing, tourism, and most of the
state population living
in and around landscapes like this one.
However, there's one thing around here packing
some serious heat:
Wildfires.
Wildfires?
Doesn't everything just come back the way
it was?
I thought fire was nature's way of cleaning
up after itself.
Well, it's more complicated than that.
When fires burn through Idaho, one of the
first plants to return is Bromus tectorum.
B. tectorum, AKA drooping brome, AKA cheatgrass,
is an invasive plant that spreads quickly
after fires.
Not only does cheatgrass crowd out the native
brush, it also burns real easy, contributing
to a vicious cycle of
even more fires and cheatgrass.
Currently, tracking the results of pre- and
post-burn treatments is done with costly and
time-intensive
ground surveys.
Limited funding and resources means that many
areas go without long-term monitoring.
The Southern
Idaho Disasters II team at the GIS center
at Idaho State University partnered with the
Bureau of Land Management,
Idaho Fish & Game, and the USDA to investigate
regrowth after three separate fires around
the state using NASA
Earth Observations.
Using images from Landsat 5 and 8 as well
as Aqua and Terra MODIS, the team created
vegetation
cover maps with high spatial and temporal
detail over long stretches of time.
These maps use differences in red and infrared
light, or NDVI, to show the spread of invasive
versus native
plants after fires to help determine what
recovery methods work best and over what time
periods.
With so much required data, processing can
be tedious.
The team created a program with a user-friendly
interface to process
large data sets, creating vegetation maps,
clipping satellite images down to a particular
fire site, and outputting useful
statistics.
This means that even if each fire responds
differently during recovery, land managers
can identify issues early
and adapt accordingly.
So instead of just NASA knowin' it, now you
can know it too!
How neat is that?
Pretty neat.
