July 15

Today I started by reading a few papers that Dr. Vodacek gave me on the area of my research project: using remote sensing in order to identify fire burns/scars.  In order to complete this task, most researchers use the NBR, which stands for normalized burn ratio.  By taking the difference of the near infrared band 4 and the short wave infrared band 7 and dividing this value by the sum of those same bands, one gets the NBR for the particular region in which they are interested.  If one then finds the NBR for a particular region before and after a fire comes through, the change in NBR can be solved by finding the difference of the pre and post fire NBR values.  On a scale, the NBR can show the severity of the fire and therefore aid in the analysis of the impact on vegetation.  In addition, today I attended the annual Remote Sensing Meeting and all of the interns sat in on a presentation by Mr. Pow about the freshman imaging project that incoming freshman at RIT take part in.  My goal for tomorrow is to apply what I learned today about the NBR to images with noticeable fire scars and burns.