06:00，我正在与无人机飞行员皮特·肖特会面，准备在凯恩戈姆国家公园进行黎明巡逻。
It is 06:00 and I'm meeting drone pilot Pete Short for a dawn patrol in the Cairngorms National Park.
他从七月份那场席卷整片景观的特大山火开始，已经从事这项工作近三个月了。
It is a job he has been doing for almost three months, since a huge wildfire tore through this landscape in July.
席卷山坡的火焰已经熄灭。从我们站立的位置来看，几乎看不出这里还有火灾的迹象。但这正是我们前来寻找的原因。在颠簸的林间道路行驶后，皮特将热成像无人机送入清晨的天空。
The flames which swept across the hillsides are gone. From where we are standing, there is little to suggest there is still a fire here at all. But that is exactly what we have come to find. After a bumpy drive into the woodland, Pete launches a thermal drone into the early morning sky.
我也被分配了一项任务：在他在屏幕上研究回传图像时，保持无人机在视线范围内。
I am given a job too: keeping the aircraft in sight while he studies the images being sent back to his screen.
“每周我都希望什么也没发现，”他告诉我。“在我上一次进行的热成像飞行中，我们发现了八处。”事情进展得很快。
"Every week I hope that I find none," he tells me. "On the last thermal flight I did we found eight." It doesn't take long.
“这里可能有情况，”皮特说，就在热成像图像下方的一棵树下出现了一片白色光斑。火灾最初点燃已经过去三个月，地面下仍在检测到热量。我们按照无人机识别出的坐标前进，起初几乎看不到什么。然后我们感觉到了。土壤是温热的。皮特从地上捡起的一块岩石也是热的。就在附近，刮去一层薄薄的泥土后，竟然冒出了烟雾。“它真的还在继续燃烧，”皮特说。
"We might have something here," Pete says, as a white glow appears on the thermal image beneath a tree. Three months after the fire first ignited, heat is still being detected beneath the ground. We make our way towards the coordinates identified by the drone, and at first, there is almost nothing to see. Then we feel it. The soil is warm. A rock Pete picks up from the ground is, too. Nearby, after scraping away a thin layer of earth, smoke begins to rise. "It's really now cooking away," Pete says.
“如果没有热成像技术，我们将完全看不见这些。”根据凯恩戈姆国家公园管理局的数据，这场山火始于七月中旬，烧毁了约3300公顷——即33平方公里——的土地。
"Without the thermal technology we would be totally blind to this." The wildfire began in the middle of July and burned across about 3,300 hectares – 33 sq km – of land, according to the Cairngorms National Park Authority.
在紧急情况最严峻的时候，五名经验丰富的无人机飞行员被召集起来，为扑火机构提供空中信息。
At the height of the emergency, five experienced drone pilots were brought together to provide aerial information to the agencies fighting the fire.
皮特形容这是他曾经飞行过的最具挑战性的环境之一，有“多道火墙”，人员和车辆在现场来回移动，直升机在头顶上方运行。如今，挑战已经不同了。虽然剧烈的火焰已经消失，但地下仍可能存在持续燃烧的热点。
Pete describes it as one of the most challenging environments he has ever flown in, with "multiple walls of flame", personnel and vehicles moving around the site and helicopters operating overhead. Now the challenge is different. The dramatic flames have disappeared, but hot spots can continue to burn beneath the earth.
每架无人机发现的火情都会向土地管理者报告。他们会派出能够挖掘地面并用水浇灭的团队。
Each one found by the drones is reported to the land manager. They send teams who can dig into the ground and douse it with water.
对于RSPB在阿伯内蒂的高级场地经理本·琼斯来说，准确知道将这些团队派往何处至关重要。"我们已经与这场火灾作斗争超过两个月了，显然我们在人力资源方面有限，我们不能一直让所有人员随时随地外出作战。"他说。"因此，我们真的需要知道这些具体的热点位置——我们应该把人员派往何处——这样他们才能尽可能高效地工作。"尽管天气变得更冷更湿，但剩余的火灾仍不能简单地被忽视。"每个热点都有可能重新点燃更大的火灾。"本说。走进森林，所发生的一切规模几乎令人心惊。
For Ben Jones, senior site manager for the RSPB at Abernethy, knowing exactly where to send those teams has been crucial. "We've been fighting this fire for over two months now and obviously we've got limited resources in terms of the number of people we have and we can't send everybody out everywhere all the time," he says. "So we really need to know where these specific hot spots are - where we should be sending people - so that they can be as efficient as possible." And despite the arrival of colder, wetter weather, the remaining fires cannot simply be ignored. "Each of these hot spots has got the potential to reignite a larger fire," Ben says. Walking through the forest, the scale of what happened is almost haunting.
树干被烧焦变黑。刺鼻的火灾气味仍然弥漫在空气中。森林地面的大片区域被焦黑。但仔细观察，你会发现有几抹色彩。
Tree trunks are blackened and charred. The acrid smell of fire still hangs around. Large areas of the forest floor have been scorched. But look closely and there are splashes of colour.
绿色的嫩芽正在冒出。真菌正在生长。我甚至看到一朵小黄花从焦黑的土地上冒了出来。
Green shoots are emerging. Fungi is growing. I even spot a small yellow flower shooting up from the blackened ground.
凯恩戈姆国家公园管理局保护部门负责人莎拉·亨舍尔博士表示，目前还无法了解火灾的全部生态影响。"有些影响会非常快速地显现，有些则需要数年、数十年，甚至超出我们的一生。"她说。"它会恢复，但我们目前还不知道恢复后会是什么样子。"而在火灾期间提供帮助，并且仍在寻找火灾残余的无人机，现在被赋予了另一项任务。皮特正在编程它们，反复沿着受损景观完全相同的航线飞行。
Dr Sarah Henshall, head of conservation at the Cairngorms National Park Authority, says it is too early to know the full ecological impact of the fire. "Some of that will be incredibly quick, some of it will take years, decades, or even beyond our lifetime," she says. "It will recover, but we just don't know what that's going to look like yet." And the drones that helped during the fire - and are still searching for what remains of it - are being given another job. Pete is programming them to repeatedly fly exactly the same routes over the damaged landscape.
利用预设的航点，可以在同一位置月复一月、年复一年地拍摄照片和视频，使保护主义者能够建立起景观变化的图景。
Using predetermined waypoints, photographs and video can be taken from the same positions month after month and year after year, allowing conservationists to build up a picture of how the landscape changes.
这条标准无人机航线将逐月、逐年飞行完全相同的路线，从视觉上看，它将为我们提供一些惊人的信息，让我们了解其恢复情况，"莎拉说。
"This standard drone route will have exactly the same route flown month by month, year by year and visually it's going to give us some amazing information about how it's recovering," Sarah says.
这项技术还可能发挥另一种作用——在火势蔓延之前发现潜在的火灾。
There could be another role for the tech too - spotting future fires before they have a chance to spread.
皮特认为，快速获得树冠之上的视角可能至关重要。"在野火失控之前的那些时刻，可能是阻止其失控的关键，"他说。在地面上，我们的巡逻队发现了另一个热点。
Pete believes getting a view above the tree canopy quickly could prove critical. "It's those moments before a wildfire gets out of control that could be critical to stopping it before it gets out of hand," he says. Back on the ground, our patrol has found another hot spot.
同样，从远处几乎看不到任何东西。但通过无人机的引导，我们找到了精确的位置。
Again, there is almost nothing visible from a distance. But guided by the drone, we find the precise spot.
在一层薄薄的土壤之下，这里很热，而在我们翻动土壤后，烟雾变得明显。又一个需要报告的位置。另一场需要地面队伍扑灭的火灾。
Beneath a thin layer of earth, it is hot and the smoke becomes obvious after we stoke the soil. Another location to report. Another fire for the ground teams to extinguish.
就在我们头顶，森林已经开始显现出复苏的最初迹象；但在我们脚下，最后的火焰仍在燃烧。
Above us, the forest is already showing its first signs of life but below our feet, the last of the fire is still burning.