Yellowstone National Park Thermal Imaging

Project details
The National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis is working with the National Park Service to map and monitor thermal water features in Yellowstone National Park. In 2002, NCLFA acquired a dataset of thermal and visual imagery of the Norris Basin area of the Park and analyzed those images. A second acquisition of the Norris Basin area occurred in 2005; and in 2006, the NCLFA acquired imagery of the Norris Basin area, Mud Volcano, Old Faithful, Mammoth Terrace, and LaDuke Hotspring thermal features. By identifying differences between the 2005 and 2006 acquisition data, NCLFA can help the Park to detect change in thermal features location and/or attributes.

The 2005 and 2006 acquisitions were conducted by the Pacific Southwest Research Station, using FireMapper. FireMapper measures the radiance of emitted thermal-infrared light and depicts the apparent surface temperature (in Celsius) as estimated from radiance and a simple blackbody model. From these images, NCLFA compiled a mosaic of thermal imagery and a visible mosaic that includes the near-infrared spectrum. NCLFA has also worked out an estimation of emissivity, or the effectiveness of an object to re-radiate energy, in order to get radiant temperature from kinetic temperature.

To calibrate the thermal camera, NCLFA researchers placed thermal loggers into thermal features. These thermal loggers measure the kinetic temperature while the remote sensing instruments detect and quantify apparent radiant temperature (radiant exitance) and convert that measured energy into a digital brightness number. In 2005 in situ loggers were placed in thermal pools; in 2006 NCLFA placed in situ loggers, but an on-board thermal calibration mechanism in the sensor did the calibrating.

Project development
Colin Hardy, now Fire Behavior Project Leader at the US Forest Services Fire Sciences Lab, began this project in 2002 as his PhD dissertation at the National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis. Yellowstone National Park wanted to continue monitoring the thermal features of the Park; after completion of this PhD work in 2005, the NCLFA continued his work. NCLFA is supporting this research effort, as are teams from the Utah State and Montana State University, which are acquiring thermal information with different sensors.

Principal Investigator: Carl Seielstad
Co-Principal Investigators: Colin Hardy, LLoyd Queen, Josh Rodriguez
Project Partners: Cheryl Jaworoski,  Henry Heasler -- Yellowstone National Park