Brazilian fire scientists Drs. Alberto Setzer, Karla Longo and Saulo Freitas of the National Space Research Institute of Brazil (INPE) visited the Department for a three-day meeting of the project “Long-term fire dynamics in the Amazon” hosted by PI Ivan Csiszar and Wilfrid Schroeder. Also participated in the meeting Co-I’s Christopher Schmidt of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and Jeffrey Morisette of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The project is aimed at generating a consistent multi-sensor data record of active fire observations and estimating corresponding fire emissions in the Amazon. The three-year project is part of Phase III of the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA) and is funded by NASA.

Drs. Alberto Setzer and Karla Longo also gave a joint seminar as part of the Department’s Thursday seminar series. Dr. Setzer’s talk was entitled “Tendencies in biomass burning in Brazil: technical and social approaches”, focusing on fire detection and monitoring. Dr. Longo presented a talk co-authored with Dr. Freitas, entitled “Biomass burning smoke monitoring and forecasting system for South America”.

From left to right: Wilfrid Schroeder, Christopher Schmidt, Alberto Setzer, Karla Longo, Saulo Freitas and Ivan Csiszar.