Monthly burned area from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED)

  • Released Tuesday, December 15, 2015
View full credits

The final animation of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection with a colorbar and date overlay

This time series was created using data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) onboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. Burned area is estimated by applying an algorithm that detects rapid changes in visible and infrared surface reflectance imagery. Fires typically darken the surface in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and brighten the surface in several wavelength bands in the shortwave infrared that are sensitive to the surface water content of vegetation. Thermal emissions from actively burning fires also are measured by MODIS and are used to improve the burned area estimates in croplands and other areas where the fire sizes are relatively small. This animation portrays burned area between September 2000 and August 2015 as a percent of the 1/4 degree grid cell that was burned each month. The values on the color bar are on a log scale, so the regions shown in blue and green shades indicate small burned areas while those in red and orange represent a larger percent of the region burned. Beneath the burned area, the seasonal Blue Marble landcover shows the advance and retreat of snow in the northern hemisphere. More information about the Global Fire Emissions Database, including maps of burned area and fire emissions, can be found here.

A print resolution still image of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection with a colorbar and date overlay

A print resolution still image of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection with a colorbar and date overlay

A print resolution still image of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection without the colorbar and date

A print resolution still image of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection without the colorbar and date

The final animation of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection but without the colorbar and date overlay

The final animation of the monthly burned area percent shown in the Robinson projection but without the colorbar and date overlay

The corresponding date overlay

The corresponding date overlay

The original animation in lat/lon (or Platte Carree) projection

The original animation in lat/lon (or Platte Carree) projection

The colorbar with transparency

The colorbar with transparency

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

The Blue Marble Next Generation data is courtesy of Reto Stockli (NASA/GSFC).

This page was originally published on Tuesday, December 15, 2015.
This page was last updated on Sunday, January 5, 2025 at 12:06 AM EST.

Missions

This page is related to the following missions:

Datasets used

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