The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) requested that the HLS production team generate a Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) false color composite layer compatible with the FIRMS user interface. The SWIR false color composite provides enhanced contrast between burned and unaffected vegetation and can see through smoke to allow for detection of active fire fronts at much higher resolution (30-meter) than was previously available (375-meter). With an eye to the future, the HLS production team produces this layer dynamically (i.e. the false color composites are generated from the data directly in the cloud) rather than a static tiled image. The HLS SWIR false color composite data layer was made publicly available as a beta release in FIRMS on Monday April 25, 2022 and data is currently available from March 15, 2022 - present. As a result, the USFS has been better able to assess the impact of the fires in the western US in late April.
