09-23-2010, 01:00 AM
(This is probably a lot more than most want to know! The sat pictures are of Idaho and Utah, but are also available for the other areas of the country on this same site.)
Well I haven't used it for reservoirs much either, so I hope that it isn't just 6 inches deep! The smaller reservoirs are really hard to see. I can tell that Twin Lakes is split now, and some others are shorter. If you need lakes labeled I can do that. I have gotten used to seeing them in sat pics so I can pick them out fairly quickly.
Most of the time I use this site:
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/imagery.php
It is very easy to use and you can click back on the calendar to get a day that your area was in the clear. I frequently use the false color images. They are a combination of infrared and other parts of the spectrum that show somethings more distinctly. Vegetation is usually bright green, water reflects as black and some blue. Lavaflows as black, salts in the desert are blue, freshly burned areas are a rusty brown or red with some being black.
I use it mostly for fires and their smoke direction. As in this picture of the Twitchell Fire.
[inline TwitchelFire2.jpg]
In the early summer I use it to get an idea of when most of the snow is off of high mt areas that we hike and fish in. The snowpack usually shows as light blue like this detail from this June. June was really cloudy so this isn't a great image, but shows the tops are still covered in snow.[inline iceandsnow2.jpg]
The going back in time feature is good for looking at the reservoirs. The small ones don't always show up and I am not sure the scale is always the same, but you can see definite differences when you compare early in the summer to now. This was of southeast Idaho on July 2. The second picture is from yesterday. Notice the difference in Twin Lakes being split and Chesterfield's width.
[inline July2detail.jpg]
Besides the lakes you can even see the new fire scars in the upper left hand area.
Here is Sept 21
[inline Sep21detail.jpg]
A second site I have started poking around in a little bit is this next one. It isn't as easy to use. But it is close to being the newest images. I would love to find some that have a better level of resolution, but so far I haven't stumbled across them.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/
I choose "Near real time subsets," then choose FAS (northwest us block), then 250m pixel size
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Well I haven't used it for reservoirs much either, so I hope that it isn't just 6 inches deep! The smaller reservoirs are really hard to see. I can tell that Twin Lakes is split now, and some others are shorter. If you need lakes labeled I can do that. I have gotten used to seeing them in sat pics so I can pick them out fairly quickly.
Most of the time I use this site:
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/imagery.php
It is very easy to use and you can click back on the calendar to get a day that your area was in the clear. I frequently use the false color images. They are a combination of infrared and other parts of the spectrum that show somethings more distinctly. Vegetation is usually bright green, water reflects as black and some blue. Lavaflows as black, salts in the desert are blue, freshly burned areas are a rusty brown or red with some being black.
I use it mostly for fires and their smoke direction. As in this picture of the Twitchell Fire.
[inline TwitchelFire2.jpg]
In the early summer I use it to get an idea of when most of the snow is off of high mt areas that we hike and fish in. The snowpack usually shows as light blue like this detail from this June. June was really cloudy so this isn't a great image, but shows the tops are still covered in snow.[inline iceandsnow2.jpg]
The going back in time feature is good for looking at the reservoirs. The small ones don't always show up and I am not sure the scale is always the same, but you can see definite differences when you compare early in the summer to now. This was of southeast Idaho on July 2. The second picture is from yesterday. Notice the difference in Twin Lakes being split and Chesterfield's width.
[inline July2detail.jpg]
Besides the lakes you can even see the new fire scars in the upper left hand area.
Here is Sept 21
[inline Sep21detail.jpg]
A second site I have started poking around in a little bit is this next one. It isn't as easy to use. But it is close to being the newest images. I would love to find some that have a better level of resolution, but so far I haven't stumbled across them.
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/
I choose "Near real time subsets," then choose FAS (northwest us block), then 250m pixel size
[signature]