Ability To Measure Wildfire

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The ability to measure the areal extent of wildfire impacts is essential for quantifying the fire effects and monitoring fires over time. Many remote sensing platforms and instruments have been effectively tooled to do just this. The two primary types of remote sensing instruments are active and passive sensors. Active sensors provide their own source of energy to illuminate a targeted object. An active sensor will emit radiation in the objects direction and measure the reflectance. Passive sensors detect natural energy which is omitted by the surface and/or object. The most common active sensor used to measure wildfires is light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system. Lidar is typically used more in the measurement of canopy structure and has