Broad-Scale Monitoring of Live Fuel Moisture

Remote sensing has as a spaceborne informant about Earth system processes become the technology of choice for monitoring the status of fuels and fire at local through global scales. This study reviews techniques and presents an application of remote sensing for monitoring live fuel moistures at broad spatial scales. The text recalls the roots of biophysical remote sensing, reviewing how early work about the spectral behavior of vegetation offered insights that promoted remote sensing as a fire knowledge source. Time-series data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) are used to map relative live fuel moisture stress for the continental USA. Results of fuel moisture maps produced from the AVHRR protocols compare favorably with those derived from the Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus.