MISR Interactive Explorer (MINX) : Production Digitizing to Retrieve Smoke Plume Heights and Validating Heights Against Lidar Data

Abstract

The height at which smoke from a wildfire is injected into the atmosphere is an important parameter for climatology, because it determines how far the smoke can be transported. Using the MINX program to analyze MISR (Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer) data, I digitized wildfire smoke plumes to add to an existing database of these heights for use by scientists studying smoke transport and plume dynamics. In addition to using MINX to do production digitizing of heights, I assisted in gathering lidar data for an ongoing validation of MINX and helped evaluate those data.