Initial Publication Date: April 3, 2010

Week 8: Monitoring Fires

On This Page

Getting to Know Cartography in ArcGIS
Launch ArcGIS and Open the Aspen Fire Project
Investigate the Spread of Fire with Database Queries
Investigate the Spread of Fire with Spatial Queries
Create a new Project to Explore Additional Fire Data
Create a Map to Tell a Story of Interest to You
Resources
Movies on this Page
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Getting to Know Cartography in AEJEE

On this page, you'll review database and spatial querying as well as practice symbolizing and classifying data. You'll also find out how to gather statistics on numeric fields you query.

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Launch AEJEE and Open the Aspen Fire Project

AEJEE_logo
  • Launch AEJEE by double-clicking its icon on your desktop or by clicking its icon in the Dock (Mac) or Launch Bar (Win).
  • Choose File > Open, navigate to ESRI/AEJEE/Data/AspenAE, select the Aspen_fire.axl file, and click Open.
  • When the project opens, the base map displays a satellite image of Earth.

    The image is part of the Blue Marble collection at NASA. It is a composite generated from several different types of data. Much of the data comes from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, a remote sensing device on the Terra satellite. Latitude and longitude lines are visible on top of the image.
Aspen_Fire_Blue_Marble




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Investigate the Spread of the Fire with Database Queries

You might wonder . . . How far did the fire spread and how many acres did it consume by the end of Day 1? Day 2? Day 3? Day 4? Use database queries to find out.

  • Scroll down to the bottom of the Table of Contents. Turn off the Blue Marble Earth image. Then turn on the Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer. Zoom in until you can clearly see the perimeter lines.
  1. Scroll down to the bottom of the Table of Contents.
    TOC contents scrolled down
  2. Turn off the Blue Marble Earth image by clicking the box to the left of its name.
    blue marble off
  3. Turn on the Countries and US 48 States layer by clicking the boxes to the left of their names.
    countries and us states on
  4. Turn on the Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer. Look carefully and you will see a small dot in the Southeastern part of Arizona. This dot is all that is visible of the fire images and perimeter layer at this scale. It is necessary to zoom in for a closer look.
    countries and US states dot on crcld
  5. Make the Daily Fire Perimeter layer active by clicking on its label in the Table of Contents. Then click the Zoom to Active Layer Zoom to Full Extent button.. This is what the map looks like when zoomed in on the Daily Fire Perimeter layer.
    dily fire perimeter lines on

  • Open the Attribute Table of the Daily Fire Perimeter layer and scroll across the table until you find the ACRES field.
    • The ACRES field indicates the number of acres consumed by the fire, feature by feature. You'll notice that a single day frequently consists of several features displayed as polygons that show the area of the fire each day. We'll ask AEJEE to select these, highlighting them together.
  • Close the Attributes of Daily Fire Perimeter table.

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    Create and execute a query that shows how far the fire spread on the first day

    How would you write the query statement?

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 2

    Hint: To find out how many acres burned by the end of the second day, build and execute a query that selects the features that burned on both June 17 and June 18, 2003.

    How would you write the query statement?
    1. To find out how many total acres burned, click the Statistics button in the Query Builder window.
      date equals 617 or 618 statistics pressed crlcd
    2. A new window opens. Select ACRES as the field to get statistics about and check the Use Query Results? box. Click OK.
      satistics window crcld
    3. The Statistics Results shows the Total number of acres at 461.85.
      statistics window with results circld

    The Statistics Results include the Total which sums the acres burned for each feature. The query you built selected all the features from Day 1 and Day 2. So by the end of the second day, the fire had covered 461.85 acres.
  • Close the Statistics Results window.

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 3

    How would you write the query statement? How many acres burned?

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 4

    How would you write the query statement? How many acres burned? Movie Icon

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    Investigate the Spread of the Fire with Spatial Queries

    You might wonder . . . How many parcels were within one mile of the fire on Day 1? Day 2? Day 3? Day 4? Use spatial queries to find out.

    1. The Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer should still be on.
      dily fire perimeter lines on
    2. Turn on the Parcel Status layer by clicking the box to the left of its name.
      parcel status on
    3. Click the Zoom to Active Layer Zoom to Full Extent button. Individual parcels are now visible on the map.
      parcel status zoomed to


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      Select the area of the fire on Day 1

    1. Make the Daily Fire Perimeter layer active by click on its name in the Table of Contents. Click the Query Builder... Query builder button button or select Tools > Query Builder.
      tools query builder
    2. A new window opens. Move it to where you can see both the Query Builder and the map.
      query builder open
    3. In the Query Builder window select the field DATE by clicking once on it. Then click the "equals" sign. Last choose the Value 617 by clicking once on it. You can also type this equation (DATE = 617) into the box in the middle of the window. Click Execute.
      query completed 1 selected
  • Close the Query Builder window. One feature is selected on the map.
    query window closed

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    Buffer the area of the fire to find parcels that are within one mile of it on Day 1

    1. Click the Buffer buffer tool icon button to open the Buffer window.
      buffer window open
    2. In the Buffer window, set the Buffer Distance to 1 and the Buffer Units to Miles. Turn on the Use buffer to select features from this layer option, using the Parcel Status layer.
      buffer window open set to select

  • Click OK. The map shows a one mile buffer around the area of the fire on the first day, with parcels that are within the buffer showing as highlighted in yellow.
    buffer on map

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    Show the results of the spatial query

    1. Right-click on the PC or control-click on the Mac the Parcel Status label in the Table of Contents and select Attribute Table.
      buffer on map opening attribute table
    2. In the Attributes of Parcel Status table that opens, you can view the individual records for the layer. Scroll down the Attribute Table. The selected records are highlighted in blue. The table in this image has been scrolled partially down the list.
      attribute table of parcels open scrolled down
  • The number of parcels selected is shown at the bottom of the Attribute Table.
    just attribute table
  • How many parcels were selected?
  • Close the Attributes of Parcel Status and click the Clear All Selection Clear Selections button.

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    Repeat the steps above to find the parcels that were within one mile of the fire on days two, three, and four



    Movie Icon


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    Create a New Project to Explore Additional Fire Data



    Now that you have explored a specific fire (the Aspen fire), you will broaden your focus to look at fires globally and in the U.S. You will create a new project, add image and vector data and symbolize it as needed to help you visualize patterns in fire data.



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    Where were the fires in February 2010?

    1. Select File > New.
      file new
    2. AEJEE will ask if you want save the project that you have open. Click No.
      click no

  • Click the Add Data Layer add layer button button. Navigate to the data folder, select the Feb2010_Fire.TIFF, and click OK.
  • This is the map with the Feb2010_Fire.TIFF image turned on. The image shows fires active across the globe during February 2010. The data come from the MODIS satellite. It was downloaded from NASA Earth Obsservations (NEO) site as a GeoTIFF file. It was downloaded at the 0.25 resolution, so as not to slow down the rate at which layers are drawn. Some of the points may have been lost in this reduction.
    While it is a pretty picture, it is hard to interpret this raster data without the addition of vector data to orient our brains.
    open NEO image

  • Add the cntry95_wd.shp layer to the map. Then move this vector layer above the fire image layer.
  • The cntry95_wd.shp layer is now on the map and visible, but it is hiding the layer below it. Edit the properties of the cntry95_wd.shp layer so that only the outlines are visible on top of this predominately black image. Then give the layer a more recognizable name like Countries.
  • Now the image makes more sense to our brains. It has been given context by the Countries outline.
    NEO image with Countries

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    How Do Fire Prone Areas Change throughout the year?

    1. Click the Add Data add layer button button. Navigate to the data folder, select the FEB_2010_MODIS.shp, and click OK.
      getting MODIS layer
    2. Here is what the map looks like with after the FEB_2010_MODIS.shp layer has been added.
      MODIS on map Unclassified

  • To look for patterns in the fire data, classify the Julian date field of the layer into four classes of graduated symbols using an equal interval classification. By using four classes you are breaking up the month's worth of data into weekly intervals. The Julian calendar is often used in science. On a Julian calendar, January 1 is day one of the year and December 31st is day 365.
  • Make FEB_2010_MODIS.shp the active layer by clicking on its name in the Table of Contents. Then click the Zoom to Active Layer Zoom to Full Extent button.
    fianl map with NEO
  • What state and region had the most fires in February?

  • Choose File > Save As.. and navigate to the AspenAE folder. Name your project Feb_Fires. AEJEE will automatically add the appropriate extension (.axl) when you click Save.
    • Movie Icon

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    Create a Map to Tell a Story of Interest to You

    This is the screenshot that you will post to your discussion group for your required weekly assignment.

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    Resources


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    Movies on this Page

    This section is under construction - come back soon!

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    How to download movies

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    Flash Video Versions

    Download these versions to play on your computer. You'll need an appropriate movie player to view the file, such as Flash Player, Real Player (Mac / Win), or Adobe Media Player.

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Database Queries in AEJEE

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Spatial Queries in AEJEE

    Movie Icon Creating a New Project in AEJEE

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    iPod Versions

    Download these version to play on your iPod or iPhone.

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Database Queries in AEJEE

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Spatial Queries in AEJEE

    Movie Icon Creating a New Project in AEJEE


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