African Fire Observations and MODIS NDVI
- Visualizations by:
- Lori Perkins
- View full credits
The visualization shows fires detected in Africa from July 2002 through July 2011. Africa has more abundant burning than any other continent. MODIS observations have shown that some 70 percent of the world's fires occur in Africa alone. "It's incredibly satisfying to see such a long record of fires visualized," said Chris Justice, a scientist from the University of Maryland who leads NASA's effort to use MODIS data to study the world's fires. "It's not only exciting visually, but what you see here is a very good representation of the data scientists use to understand the global distribution of fires and to determine where and how fires are responding to climate change and population growth."
More information on the Fire Information for Resource Management (FIRMS) is available at http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/.
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
- Kayvon Sharghi (USRA)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series: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)
See more visualizations using this data setTerra and Aqua NDVI (A.K.A. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)) (Collected with the MODIS sensor)
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.
Related pages
The Fire Continent
Nov. 2, 2011, 8 p.m.
Read moreThe browning of vegetation coincides with the start of the dry season when most fires will take place. Find out how Africa s Aqua satellite. Yellow dots mark the location of several fires detected in central Africa in 2004. Scattered acacia trees populate the open savanna of this Tanzanian landscape.