The NAFI TEST website 2013

Transcription

1 The NAFI TEST website 0 A new version of the NAFI website is available for testing in 0. It will run alongside the main site and display the same data. In 04 this new site will become the main site you go to at but the older site will still continue as an option. The new site has some changes that should make it more useful these are described here. The Homepage. You ll notice the old left hand menu has now been split into a number of tabs along the top with only those menus used to go to a particular location to view a fire map shown when you open the site.. There are also some help videos you can view as soon as you open the site

2 The Fire Maps 4 The maps of fire are similar to the maps on the older site with the same symbols used for the display hotspots (recently active fires) and fire scars (burnt areas) as well as current weather information. There are some changes to the navigation and background maps: 4. The navigation is now similar to that used on Google Maps with a slider bar and arrows for panning. You should also be able to use the mouse-wheel to zoom in and out.. When you first use a map, the pan tool (the hand) will be selected and you can move around the map and use the slider to zoom in and out. You can also select the Zoom in/zoom out by rectangle tools (magnifying glasses) for more accurate zooming. The H History buttons allow you to quickly go back and forwards through all the maps you have made in your visit.. You can also choose from different background map options by clicking on the small image in the upper left of the map as you would in Google Maps. You can choose from line/topo maps (default), line maps, and topo maps as you can on the older site. One of the most useful background maps, however, should be the Google satellite image (shown below) which is an option on the new site. 4. You can hide the menu by clicking on the arrow, top left, to make more room for the map. Clicking the arrow again restores the menu.

3 The Google Satellite background has a slider bar that lets you fade the fire scars Tracking Fires Beyond locating fires, the NAFI site can also be used to find out more information about the behaviour of an active fire. The tools that let you do this are now found under the Track Fires tab just to the right of the View Fire Maps tab. This menu lets you carry out five tasks related to tracking fires: Show Recent Burnt Areas lets you see fire scars from the last few years which can be a useful guide to fuel levels. Check Fire Spread has a couple of tools for seeing in more detail how a fire is spreading. Check conditions allows you to check cloud cover which can prevent fires from being detected and check on lightning strikes which can start fires. Check for updates lets you check how recently the site was updated with fire information from satellites. Alert lets you set an alert for fires in your area (not available on this test site).

4 Tracking Fires: Show recent Burnt areas. By clicking on one of the layers in the Show Recent Burnt Areas menu (arrowed above) you can display the most recent one to three years of fire scars which in the far north can be a good guide to grassy fuel levels. In the map above the white areas have not been burnt for three years (including the year to date) and may have more fuel available for a fire. To restore the standard map, click Standard Map. Using the satellite background and the slider bar to fade the fire scars can be useful. Tracking Fires: Check Fire Spread This menu item has two useful tools for checking how rapidly and in what direction a fire is spreading: Get hotspot times and Animate hotpots. 4

5 . Clicking on the Get hotspot times tool will produce a small yellow circle at the tip of the cursor which allows your cursor to draw a boundary around a fire that you want to get hotspot times for.. Double-clicking will highlight the area selected and bring up a list of all the hotspots within the area and the times at which they were detected by the satellite and which satellite detected them.. You can drag the table to a convenient place on the screen with the cursor. You can highlight the details of a hotspot in the table and that hotpot will be highlighted on the map in yellow. So you can get an idea of the timing of fire spread. 5

6 An easier way to see how a fire is spreading is to animate the hotspots so you make a mini movie of the fire. You can do this with the Animate hotspots tool.. Clicking on the Animate hotspots tool will bring up a panel at the bottom of the screen you can drag this with the cursor if you need to position it next to your hotspots of interest. Then click the select area button and draw a boundary around the hotspots of interest with the cursor and double-click to highlight the area.. Then click the play button to start the animation of the hotspots in the highlighted area. This may take a little while, but soon you should see the slider bar move across the animation window as the hotspots are cycled through the colours orange (0-6 hours after detection), red (6- hours after detection) and gray (over hours after detection).. After the animation has played you can grab the slider bar with the cursor and move the animation back in time to analyse the fire spread in more detail. 6

7 Tracking Fires: Check Conditions This menu allows you to check the cloud conditions as seen by the satellites that detect the fires, and to view recent lightning activity. Clicking the Check Clouds option will open an image in a new tab or window that shows the view from a recent satellite pass of the area you are l ki h NAFI i For example, the image below is what you see with the Check Clouds tool when you are viewing the fire in the maps above. This image may be up to several hours old depending on the gap between satellite passes, but it shows that on this day there is relatively little cloud cover, so the satellites detection of fires should not be affected by cloud cover. It also shows smoke from the fire which may be affecting hotspot detection just to the west and north of the active fire. Clicking the Show Lightning link will bring up a display of recent satellite-detected lightning strikes on the map. Clicking Query Lightning will allow you to use the cursor to draw a boundary around strikes and see their time of detection. 7

8 Tracking Fires: Check for updates This menu allows you to see how up-to-date the fire information on the NAFI site is. The site displays fire scars (burnt area maps) which are created by fire scar mappers from recent satellite images and uploaded to the site once every one or two weeks in the fire season. Clicking on latest firescars will bring up the table below which shows the mapping periods of the most recently uploaded fire scars. Similarly, clicking on latest hotspots will display a table of the latest hotpots uploaded to the site from the satellite data processing stations. The key columns is the Acquired column which shows the time the hotspot was detected by the satellite (in Central Standard or NT Time) the table is ordered by this column with the most recently detected hotpots at the top of the table. 8

9 Tracking Fires: Alert This is where you will be able to set up alerts however they are not available while this site is being trialled. View Fire History The View Fire History tab is the main area for viewing the longer term patterns of fire activity or fire history. These patterns tend to be more useful for planning rather than in tracking an active fire, therefore the hotspots are not displayed on these maps. There are two types of fire history that can be useful in planning: (a) long term fire patterns that show the tendency for different country to be burned and (b) the time since country has been recently burnt which can be a guide to grassy fuel levels. View Fire History: Show Fire History This menu allows you to view these long term fire patterns: Years burnt 00- which shows the number of years an area of land has been burnt between 000 and 0 Late burnt 00- which shows the number of years an area of land has been burnt after July between 000 and 0 Last Burnt 00- which shows the last year in which an area was burnt between 000 and As shown below, on the new NAFI site, a useful way to view these maps is with the satellite image as a background, and to then use the slider bar to fade the fire patterns so the underlying landscape features can be more clearly seen. You can then more easily match landscape features with fire history patterns. 9

10 Years burnt 00- with line map background Years burnt 00- with satellite image background 0

11 View Fire History: Show recent burnt areas Clicking on these layers lets you display the most recent one to three years of fire scars which in the far north can be a good guide to grassy fuel levels. These layers are also used in the Track Fires menu, but in this menu they are not displayed with hotspots to make them easier to use for planning. Data The Download/ Upload Data tab is where you can download fire data from NAFI for viewing on your own software (like Google Earth or ArcGIS) and where you can upload data to the NAFI site (e.g. you can upload firelines to help the NAFI mappers better map fire scars in a particular area). The downloading should be easier to use on the new NAFI site. The upload facility is not enabled on this trial site. Data: Download data as image or shapefile You can download fire history and fire scar data from NAFI as an image for as a shapefile. Both types of datasets cover the whole of north Australia. The fire scar data download page is shown below: Just click on the Image File or Shapefile you want for the year you want. The data should then download.

12 Data: Download data as.kml file Clicking on these links lets you download various fire data as.kml files suitable for then displaying in Google Earth. If you already have Google Earth installed, clicking on these files will open up Google Earth to display the fire data. Data: Download data from map Clicking on these links lets you download hotspots and firescars from the displayed map area on NAFI. This can be useful if you are only interested in a particular area and do not want to download large files. For example, if you want to download the fire scars from the area displayed below: Clicking on fire scars will produce a box from where you can choose which year fire scars you want to download (you can display the different year fire scars in a area by going to the More Tools menu see below). Once you have selected your year, click the download button and the relevant fire scars will be downloaded as a geo-tiff image in a zip file, which you can then open in a GIS program. If you click hotpots, you can also choose the year and the hotspots from the displayed map area for that year are downloaded as a shapefile.

13 More Tools This menu has various more specialised tools. More Tools: Map Layers The Map Layers menu allows you to display or hide a range of map layers. The map layers are listed in groups. Clicking on the arrow at the left of a group will open it to reveal the layers. E.g. the Hotspots layers are shown expanded on the left. Ticking the box will display the layer Un-ticking the box will hide the layer The asterisk indicates that the layer will not become visible until you zoom in. This is used for layers with large numbers of data points like the full year hotspot layers. If you click Save as standard map below the layer list the layers you have selected should appear by default when you open NAFI again (if your browser accepts cookies and the settings will last until you clear your cookies). Clicking on query active layer will let you query the information behind every layer that is currently displayed by drawing a boundary around an area with those layers displayed inside it. If more than one layer is displayed, information on all layers is displayed. Similarly, clicking on get hotspot times will allow you to draw a boundary around any displayed hotspot layers and a table with the hotspot acquisition times for all layers will be displayed.

14 More Tools: Links & Information The Links & Information menu provides links to useful information for fire managers: A page of useful links (fire organisations, weather information, satellite information, other fire tracking websites) that is on the current NAFI site. A link to fire management information on a separate website. Once you click on Fire management information you will be taken to the Northern Land Manager website ( which will open with the fire topics already opened as shown below. 4

15 You can then choose your region of interest, your particular fire topic, or the type of item you want by clicking on the menu columns. For example, if you are interested in examples of fire management practice from Cape York Peninsula, you would see the display below:. The menu highlights the categories you select and shows the number of items in brackets that match your selection. In this case there are 9 items that are fire case studies or practice related to the Cape York Peninsula Bioregion. The other categories also display numbers in brackets that show the number of items related to that category and the highlighted other categories. E.g. there are items on Grazing and Fire related to cape York Peninsula, and there is one item from the Einsaleigh Uplands Bioregion that is a fire case study/practice.. The Region you chose is shown on a map with the number of items highlighted.. The results list displays the items found with a title and a summary of the contant and the type of item it is. Clicking on the item will bring up the details as shown below. 5

16 Many of the items are like this one links to downloadable documents or to external websites which will open in a different window on your browser. More Tools: Emissions Calculator The Emissions Calculator menu has tools that allow you to calculate greenhouse gas emissions abatement from fire management in projects in the Carbon Farming Initiative. SavBAT is the Savanna Burning Abatement Tool it is a website that allows you to estimate the greenhouse gases that have been abated by a fire and emissions abatement project that uses the Savanna Burning Methodology under the Carbon Farming Initiative. To use this site to estimate emissions you will need to have key information about your project including the vegetation mapping in an appropriate format the details are outlined in the user manual on the SavBAT website. Download SavBAT Data downloads the fire-related map data that have been used in the emissions calculations on SavBAT. 6

17 More Tools: Report a problem To Report a problem use this menu to the NAFI web managers. More Tools: Map Legend You can use the Map legend menu to display or hide the map legend. Help The Help menu provides links to information that helps you use the NAFI site. What s New summarises the new features of the site and links to this pdf. Getting started is a short video on how to get started on the NAFI site. Other Videos takes you to the collection of all NAFI help videos on different features of the site. About NAFI is an overview of the functions and limitations of the site. NAFI fire data links to a pdf of frequently asked questions on the data behind the NAFI site. 7