NASA Acres scientists compile satellite resources for Maui Wildfire response

August 24, 2023 - Written By Nicole Pepper

The Maui County Food Security Data Visualization Project is a partnership between Maui United Way, Responsible Markets (Maui ESG Project), University of Hawaii, and NASA Acres/NASA Harvest, funded by NASA. It aims to address critical data gaps in Maui County related to food insecurity and climate change with satellite imagery and machine learning.

In the aftermath of the devastating fires in Maui, Acres scientists, Dr. Hannah Kerner and Gabriel Tseng, have compiled satellite-based resources to support the wildfire response efforts. Satellite and other geospatial data was used to better understand the evolution and impact of the wildfires on Maui (and in the future, how to anticipate or prevent them). There is an abundance of information online about the fires including satellite data, but it can be hard to sort through everything. On this page, Hannah and Gabriel organized the sources of satellite data related to the fires and share resources for accessing this satellite data and derived products.

One of the featured resources is the NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) dashboard, which combines data from multiple satellites to detect active wildfires, primarily by looking for the strong heat signature of fires. Their visualization dashboard shows locations where active fires were detected in the most recent satellite observations. The above image shows a visual from their dashboard of the Maui Wildfire, active burn areas are displayed in red, that was detected using their dashboard.