New Website Displays Global Wildfire Data

First posted on 09-09-2010

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization has created a fire map using information from NASA satellites to pinpoint wildfires burning anywhere in the world. The system is capable of emailing alerts of a fire’s coordinates and strength to help improve firefighter response time, and can manage this less than three hours after a satellite passes over burning land.

“Knowing how many fires are in an area during any 24-hour period and their coordinates is absolutely invaluable in saving lives, farms and homes, especially in remote places,” said program scientist Woody Turner. “The fact that the system also helps us document fires for research purposes is an added benefit.”

The Global Fire Information Management System (GFIMS) delivers fire data from an imaging sensor aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. Fire maps are generated daily and are available through a freely accessible Web interface at: http://geonetwork4.fao.org/firemap/

The site allows visitors to zoom in on locations throughout the world, choose to view detailed information about fires and fire intensities for any location and even select the map’s background image. Information is displayed for the past 24, 48 or 72 hour periods as well as for the past 7 days to visualize any emerging trends. Visitors can also choose to view data from custom time periods they select in a dropdown box. Another map custimization is the ability to overlay rivers, cities and protected areas to enhance fire locations.

NASA’s imaging data comes from an instrument that scans the entire globe from pole to pole every 1-2 days. Software looks for fire signatures as measured by brightness and thermal radiation while it discards false detections caused by deserts and the glint of the sun on ground objects.

Early fire detection not only helps local firefighting crews respond more quickly, it helps areas farther downstream from wildfires. Smoke plumes that carry carbon monoxide and microscopic particles of pollutants can span miles away from fires. Last month’s wildfires in Russia caused a plume that ran 1,860 miles from east to west and was responsible for grounding planes and darkening skies.