Global Fire Observations and MODIS NDVI

Released Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Updated Thursday, January 14, 2021 at 6:22PM

ID: 3868

- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
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This visualization leads viewers on a narrated global tour of fire detections beginning in July 2002 and ending July 2011. The visualization also includes vegetation and snow cover data to show how fires respond to seasonal changes. The tour begins in Australia in 2002 by showing a network of massive grassland fires spreading across interior Australia as well as the greener Eucalyptus forests in the northern and eastern part of the continent. The tour then shifts to Asia where large numbers of agricultural fires are visible first in China in June 2004, then across a huge swath of Europe and western Russia in August, and then across India and Southeast Asia through the early part of 2005. It moves next to Africa, the continent that has more abundant burning than any other. MODIS observations have shown that some 70 percent of the world's fires occur in Africa alone. In what's a fairly average burning season, the visualization shows a huge outbreak of savanna fires during the dry season in Central Africa in July, August, and September of 2006, driven mainly by agricultural activities but also by the fact that the region experiences more lightning than anywhere else in the world. The tour shifts next to South America where a steady flickering of fire is visible across much of the Amazon rainforest with peaks of activity in September and November of 2009. Almost all of the fires in the Amazon are the direct result of human activity, including slash-and-burn agriculture, because the high moisture levels in the region prevent inhibit natural fires from occurring. It concludes in North America, a region where fires are comparatively rare. North American fires make up just 2 percent of the world's burned area each year. The fires that receive the most attention in the United States, the uncontrolled forest fires in the West, are less visible than the wave of agricultural fires prominent in the Southeast and along the Mississippi River Valley, but some of the large wildfires that struck Texas earlier this spring are visible.

More information on the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is available at http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/.

Fire observations from around the world taken over nearly 10 years are shown in this visualization of NASA satellite data.

For complete transcript, click here.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.

A 10 year sequence of global fires as seen by NASA's MODIS instruments.

Colortable showing MODIS fire pixels. The number colorized is MODIS MCD14ML T21 Brightness temperature minus the T31 Brightness temperature.

Colortable showing MODIS' 16 Day Composite NDVI

Australia on December 15, 2002.

Asia and Europe on September 15, 2004

South America on September 15, 2009

The United States on July 15, 2011.

This frame set is designed for the Science On a Sphere venues. It contains global fire and vegetation data from July 1, 2002 through July 30, 2011.

NASA Science: Earth

Atmospheric science Biosphere Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Earth Science Ecological Dynamics Ecosystems Fire Occurrence Fires For Educators Forestry HDTV Human Dimensions Hyperwall Natural Disaster Natural hazards Presentation

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Animators
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
- Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC)
Writer
- Adam P. Voiland (SSAI)
Scientists
- Chris Justice (University of Maryland)
- Louis Giglio (University of Maryland)
- Luigi Boschetti (University Of Maryland College Park)
Producer
- Jefferson Beck (KBRwyle)

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Terra

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Narrated Movies

Datasets used in this visualization

Terra and Aqua Fire Location (Collected with the MODIS sensor)

Credit: Fire location data courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project (NASA/GSFC and University of Maryland - http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov)

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Terra and Aqua NDVI (A.K.A. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)

NASAJune 2002 through July 2011

See more visualizations using this data set

Terra and Aqua Ice and Snow (A.K.A. Pixel Reliability (value=2)) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)

Analysis

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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

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