A Look Back at a Decade of Fires
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- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
- View full credits
For more than a decade, instruments on Terra and Aqua, two of NASA's flagship Earth-observing satellites, have scanned the surface of our planet for fires four times a day. The instruments, both Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS), have revolutionized what scientists know about fire's role in land cover change, ecosystem processes, and the global carbon cycle by allowing researchers to map the characteristics and global distribution of fires in remarkable detail. The collection of videos below provides perspective on how global fires impact humans and our planet.
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.
UC Irvine scientist Jim Randerson talks about how fires influence climate.
For complete transcript, click here.
NASA scientist Amber Soja talks about the impact of fire on human health and air quality.
For complete transcript, click here.
University of Maryland scientist Chris Justice explains how some fires are essential to maintaining the ecosystem.
For complete transcript, click here.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
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Animator
- Lori Perkins (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Writers
- Adam P. Voiland (SSAI)
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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Video editor
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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Scientists
- Chris Justice (University of Maryland)
- Louis Giglio (University of Maryland)
- Luigi Boschetti (University Of Maryland College Park)
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Interviewees
- Amber Soja (NASA/LaRC)
- Chris Justice (University of Maryland)
- Jim Randerson (University of California, Irvine)
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Producer
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
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Narrator
- Jefferson Beck (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Videographer
- Rob Andreoli (Advocates in Manpower Management, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:-
NASA.gov Fires Package
(ID: 2011110)
Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 4:00AM
Datasets used in this visualization
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Terra and Aqua Fire Location
ID: 496Credit: Fire location data courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project (NASA/GSFC and University of Maryland - http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov)
See all pages that use this dataset -
Terra and Aqua NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI))
ID: 633 -
Terra and Aqua Ice and Snow (Pixel Reliability (value=2))
ID: 714
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.