A Visualization of the Catastrophic Fires in Australia using the Google Earth Engine Platform

A Fire rages across land in New South Wales, Australia. source: The New York Times

Introduction

Several regions of the mainland Australian continent have been on fire since mid 2019 post a prolonged drought that plagued Australia in 2017 and 2018. The impacted regions are characterised by thick eerie fogs, apocalyptically red skies, and unprecedented damage and adversity. Since September 2019, over 25 million acres of land have been all but reduced to ashes, claiming the lives of over a billion mammals, birds, and reptiles. The severity of these fires was felt in Auckland and New Zealand as well, as eerie orange skies loomed over the regions earlier this week. Engulfed and choked with smoke, the city of Canberra experienced the world’s worst record air quality earlier this month. The plume of smoke blankets across 1.3 billion acres of Australias mainland, which is nearly 70 percent of the country’s acreage. Although the country has an annual season wherein fires are expected, however, owing to the droughts, heat, and not to mention the effects of global climate change, the severity of these fires are among the deadliest the globe has ever seen.

Google Earth Engine

Serving as cloud based platform for planetary geospatial analysis, Google Earth Engine provides an engine with heavy computational capabilities to tackle high-impact issues worldwide. The platform not only caters to cohorts highly proficient with geographical information systems, but also to a much wider base of individuals that may utilise its vast capabilities. The Earth Engine (EE) Code Editor within the platform, is the cloud-based IDE for the Earth Engine Java Script API, where the development and processing of geospatial scripts and workflows take place. The platform offers various bands of satellite imagery, some of which we will employ for this basic visualisation.

Visualisation

The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) dataset, publicly available on Google Earth Engine, rasterises fire detection results from the LANCE fire detection product. Layered over a spatial region, FIRMS provides close to real-time active fire geospatial information, which are especially of use when challenges arise in the derivation of information from satellite data. We first employ FIRMS over our region of interest, a large area of land on the eastern coast of the mainland, to the western regions of Sydney. To have an idea of how the fires proliferated over our region of interest, the FIRMS dataset was used in over three time periods, i.e, October to November, November to December and December to January 2020. Below is a snippet of the code used on the FIRMS dataset.

// calling and filtering the FIRMS dataset //
var dataset0 = ee.ImageCollection('FIRMS').filter(
    ee.Filter.date('2019-10-01', '2019-11-01'));
  // ee.Filter.date('2019-11-01', '2019-12-01')); //
  // ee.Filter.date('2019-12-01', '2020-01-01')); //
var fire = dataset0.select('T21');
var fire_0 = {
  min: 325.0,
  max: 400.0,
  palette: ['red', 'orange', 'yellow'],
};
Map.addLayer(fire, fires_0, 'Fires');

The resulting layers show a rapid proliferation of the FIRMS detected fires in our region of interest over the span of three months. On a side-note, this region of interest is one of several currently affected by the fires, and was selected for the purpose of these visualisations due to the high impact of the fires on several indices.

Figure 1. FIRMS Visualization over a Three Month Period (Note that the small blue area (upper center) in all images is simply a reference polygon)

Confirming the inimical nature of our region of interest using FIRMS, we can now move towards other datasets and band visualisations. Next, we employ the Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument Level-2A repository which offers high-resolution and wide swath multispectral orthorectified imaging. We pre-filter out the clouds and cirrus clouds as well as our time frames, and then proceed to call the images, in bands of 10 meter resolutions.

// sentinel imaging // 
function maskS2clouds(image) {
  var qa = image.select('QA60');
  var cloudBitMask = 1 << 10;
  var cirrusBitMask = 1 << 11;
  var mask = qa.bitwiseAnd(cloudBitMask).eq(0)
      .and(qa.bitwiseAnd(cirrusBitMask).eq(0));
return image.updateMask(mask).divide(10000);
}
// the function is mapped over the monthly intervals, and the median is taken
var dataset1 = ee.ImageCollection('COPERNICUS/S2_SR')
                  .filterDate('2019-10-01', '2019-11-01')   
                //.filterDate('2019-11-01', '2019-12-01')
                //.filterDate('2019-12-01', '2020-01-01')
                 .filter(ee.Filter.lt('CLOUDY_PIXEL_PERCENTAGE',
20))
                  .map(maskS2clouds);
var rgbVis = {
  min: 0.0,
  max: 0.3,
  bands: ['B4', 'B3', 'B2'],
};
Map.addLayer(dataset1.median(), rgbVis, 'RGB');
// procedures to import MOD11A1 V6’s LST and the Burn Area Index are similar and hence not provided // 

Figure 2. Sentinel, MOD11A1 V6 LST, and Burn Area Index (BAI) Visualised over region of interest

Filtering for cloud and cirrus cover, the same sort of proliferation seen with the FIRMS datasets are consistent with the smoke plumes visualised with Sentinel. In the same manner, we employ the MOD11A1 V6 to visualise daily land surface temperature (LST) and emissivity values, following which we visualise a composite from the Landsat-8 Burn Area Index (BAI).

Already evident from worldwide news coverage, it goes without saying that these fires have proven catastrophic to the Australian environment and population. A localised visualisation such as this is indicative of the severity of fires in individual regions across the mainland, that tantamount to levels of adversity that the mainland is now experiencing.

What You Can Do to Help

The fires are quite dynamic in nature and hence it is important to be aware of where your information comes from, especially if you are contributing to efforts at mitigating the fires. Several news outlets have provided links to various ways in which you can aid relief efforts, while avoiding scams. Some of these links are listed below.

Aid Towards Firefighting Efforts

• The NSW’s Rural Fire Service donation page supporting firefighting efforts in New South Wales, one of the worst hit regions in Australia.
• The Rural Fire Brigades Association donation page for firefighters in Queensland.
• The Country Fire Service for South Australia.
• The Country Fire Authority for firefighting efforts in Victoria.

Relief Efforts

• Red Cross Disaster Relief and Recovery Fund for Australia.
• The Victorian Bushfire Appeal directs donations to communities in need, ensuring the money goes directly to individuals/households displaced or affected by the fires.
• The Salvation Army Emergency Services of the Salvation Army are helping displaced communities on site.
• For long term support, the Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal is taking donations to be used in long term efforts aimed at recovery and rebuilding.
• The Australian Wildfire Relief Fund set up by GlobalGiving provides relief and support to families affected by the fires.

Wildlife and Ecology

• RSPCA Bushfire Appeal aims at the protection of pets, livestock, and wildlife that have been affected by the fires.
• WWF donation page for conservation efforts and emergency care.
• Wires donation page, for efforts towards the rescue of Australia’s fauna.

Several other relief efforts and services that accept donations can be found here, where links to a myriad of services are available such as aid towards Mental Health, Auctions and Fundraisers, Housing, Equipment, Food etcetera. Immediate relief and aid is crucial as the crisis is happening now.