Residents of Interior Alaska once tracked the course of the summer by the blooms on the fireweed and the size of the mosquitoes. Now, it seems that once gardens have been established, we residents start the nervous habit of waking up each morning peering over our shoulders and taking deep whiffs of the air to
detect any hint of approaching wildfires.

In the summer of 2004, some of the worst wildfires to rip across Alaska burned more than 6.5 million acres, costing a record $106 million in suppression efforts. Interior Alaska residents sealed windows and doors, ran air filters and tried in vain to get relief from the toxic air. The city of Fairbanks suffered more than 42 smoky days, including several that were four times the hazardous standard. At the time, that smoky summer appeared to be one of those disasters that comes along rarely and makes for interesting table talk years down the road. But five years later, the wildfire trend seems to be the new summer norm.

Whether or not Alaska’s fire season has permanently changed remains to be seen. What can be seen is that the trend of heavy fire seems to have changed from one bad season about every ten years to an overall increase in the number of bad seasons. According to some researchers, recent fire activity in Alaska is also more extensive than it has been in the last 150 years.

On the front lines, the Alaska Fire Service manages and fights wildfires on federal lands; state lands are protected by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Forestry Division.  The Geographic Information Network of Alaska at the University of Alaska Fairbanks is at the forefront of supporting this effort. The program, called GINA by folks on campus, makes satellite data products and distributes them in real time to support fire managers. Data that comes from satellites needs to be processed into usable information products like maps, images of smoke, infrared image maps and hot spot locations. Technical staff at GINA run a sophisticated data processing system that takes the raw satellite data and process it into useable forms that can help wildfire managers protect lives and property. GINA’s very popular wildfire map and image products are distributed nationwide and used by everyone from front-line fire managers to the general public.

So what is it that makes GINA such a help to Alaska? For one, GINA delivers some of the world’s best imagery to the folks who need it in the most remote areas of the United States. These products solve problems for a wide variety of users—from the fire managers on the ground, to National Weather Service river and weather forecasters, to scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory who use GINA satellite data to track volcanic ash plumes over the Arctic for aviation safety (see page 5).

GINA operates two satellite ground receiving stations on the Fairbanks campus that are used to capture data from NASA and NOAA satellites. In addition to the UAF-owned receiving stations, GINA also works closely with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Station, one of the nation’s top satellite facilities. This station receives data from U.S. civilian, U.S. military, European, Chinese, Japanese and other international satellites. From the NOAA facility, a real-time copy of satellite data is transmitted over a dedicated, high-speed line back to the Fairbanks campus where GINA creates and distributes near-real-time information products that are specialized to Alaska and the Arctic.  This includes the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. These sensors pass over and image Alaska more than ten times per day. Combined with the dozens of daily overpasses by NOAA Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, or AVHRR satellites, which provide imagery of Earth’s land, oceans and clouds, GINA receives and distributes comprehensive land, ocean, and atmospheric imagery and data of Alaska and the circumpolar Arctic.

The effects of global climate change are well-documented in Alaska, and images captured by aircraft and satellites over the years are important in continuing to study these changes. Imagery is a key component in informing land management, science, engineering and public safety.  Alaska has been photographed in its entirety twice, first in the early 1950s by the USGS and second by NASA using U2 spy planes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1950s USGS imagery was used to create the topographic maps still in broad use today, and the later 1980s imagery is often used today as an imagery base layer despite the significant changes to the landscape that have occurred in the last 25 years. With technical leadership from GINA, the Alaska Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative will continue working to produce new statewide imagery and elevation data to provide more accurate information of the changes, many the result of warming climate, that have occurred over the years.

Through the mapping initiative, GINA has also become the state of Alaska’s official archive of high-resolution imagery and elevation data. New statewide data is already being added to the GINA archive and distributed to all users through Internet maps and services at alaskamapped.org.
It will not be known for some time what role fire will play, or already is playing, in the changes that are facing Alaska’s landscape. As the years pass, data will continue to be collected and analyzed. As the Alaska Fire Service gears up for what could be another interesting fire season in Alaska, the staff at GINA will continue to devise new ways to support their efforts.