This week’s guided exercise will use EO data to compare the monitoring and coverage of active fires.

For this exercise, we will use the Global Forest Watch Fires interactive map from the World Resources Institute.

Follow the steps below and then join the discussion to compare results and discuss ideas with other learners. Once you feel confident with the tool, you can explore other locations and data sets of your choice.

You may find it helpful to open the exercise in a separate window.

1. Go to Global Forest Watch Fires interactive map.

2. Scroll over to South East Asia and zoom in on a region, for example Southern Kalimantan, Indonesia (please note that it can be slow to load the fire data points, particularly when changing levels of zoom).

3. Using the menu on the left-hand side of the map, switch on the VIIRS active fires and MODIS active fires overlays in turn for the following time frames - Past 24 hours, 48 hours 72 hours and past week. How do the number of active fires change over time?

4. Look at the information for each of the two overlays (you can view this by clicking on the i button next to each overlay). What are the key differences between the VIIR and MODIS observations? If we look at Southern Kalimantan for example, why does VIIRS show many more observations in the previous week than MODIS?

5. Using the menu on the left-hand side of the map explore different land cover and land use overlays. Can you identify which of the various land cover types is the most affected by fire in the past week? Can you identify which of the various land use types is the most affected by fire in the past week?

6. Using the right-hand toolbar, click on the View High-Res Imagery button and switch on the Digital Globe - First Look and Display Footprints buttons.

Select a large date range (e.g. January 1st 2013 to present), and then select one of the red footprint boxes that will be displayed over the region you are looking at. Select one of the resulting WorldView or GeoEye images.

Think about the following questions:

• Is the resulting image cloud free, cloudy or hazy?

• If you select one of the other images for that footprint, is that clearer or more cloudy?

• What other features can you identify from the optical data?

• What is the spatial resolution, or pixel size of the satellite data, and how does this the quality of the image?

Take the end of week test

You can take the end of week test by clicking on the test button located on the top-right.