Its primary purpose is to enable a new form of citizen science so we can all contribute to the safety of our forests and our atmosphere. The ALERTWildfire network has become a wide-ranging system with unique capabilities for visualizing some of the most remote areas of California (with a few additional stations in Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah). “AlertWildfire mountaintop camera network tracked 240 western wildfires in 2017” “First LEGO League: What happens to those great project ideas?” “Children’s forest fire detection system deployed by Sony Europe” Here is a documentary made in 2009 by John Keitel & Stephen Kijak about the original Forest Guards.Īnd here are a few of the many articles about the history of the program: In Orange County alone, more than 400 citizens have volunteered to watch ALERTWildfire cameras during fire season, especially during red flag days and nights! The public now has access to this expanding system ( making their dream of a socially engaged public in the fight against wildfire come true. Recent funding through regional utilities, county-based organizations and CALFIRE enabled the vision set out by the Forest Guard young adults: nearly 1000 cameras in California alone, and eventually thousands in the Western US!Ī decade later, the 5th generation of this system has been installed around the west, providing critical information on 1500+ fires in the past five years. A mix of private and public funding provided the means to launch ALERT Tahoe and the BLM Wildland Fire Camera program. These cameras were a game-changer, enabling a next-generation approach to early wildfire detection, confirmation and tracking. Their team leader Heidi Buck and 6 young adults joined together with the seismology lab and Sony Europe to deploy a prototype system in 2010.īy mid 2013, the Nevada Seismological Lab embraced a new generation of IP-capable, near-infrared HD cameras. Their most innovative contribution was the added ingredient of using social media and the web to engage the public to stand guard over the forest – to become Forest Guards. Their brilliant idea was to seed the forest with wirelessly connected cameras to enable early wildfire detection. The Forest Guards won the Innovate Award at the Children’s Climate Action in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. What became the ALERTWildfire system began as a joint project between the Nevada Seismological Laboratory and the Forest Guard team, a group of young students from Meadow Vista in Placer County, California. Their idea was to create a network of crowd-sourced fire lookout towers throughout the west so everyone could become fire spotters. It all started with a group of kids (self-named “Forest Guards”) tackling the problem of climate catastrophe back in 2008. And during fire season, the imagery can be truly terrifying. Without that, the landscapes are just a blank canvas (to me, anyway). It’s an infinite source of time-lapse material, especially during the winter months when the weather is interesting. In other ways it’s more intimate than that because you know that nobody’s there and you’re “lurking” in a place where no person actually is. In some ways it’s like having a team of 700 videographers always ready to shoot in the most remote locations, 24 hours a day. The optimal period to capture each shot is 1 hour, so if you wait more than 20-30 minutes you’ve lost the opportunity. There’s a feeling of exhilaration…of being “on the hunt” and when I see an interesting weather pattern developing, I’ll make a note of it and return to that location a few times over the next half hour or so. So a big part of it is understanding the meteorology of the various regions of the West and this connects you more deeply with nature. This image data is ephemeral: it’s not stored and if you miss it you’re SOL. It opens up a new world of nature/climate media content creation and you never have to leave your home or studio. This artistic usage is not a purpose for which the network was intended, but anyone can do this with After Effects, Topaz Video Enhance AI, a couple of After Effects plugins and a fair amount of computer horsepower. Built with tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure, this network was originally developed to assist in firespotting and firefighting efforts. This article describes a technique for creating high-quality time-lapse videos by using a networked remote surveillance camera system. But I’m going to let him explain it in his own words: everything that follows was written by Gary (with some light edits by me, so any typos or grammatical errors are my doing). His current passion project involves pulling footage from a network of remote cameras and turning it into something quite remarkable. My friend Gary Yost is a filmmaker, photographer, software developer, and lover of the natural world with a very unique blend of artistic and technical talents.
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