Fire Towers in the Sky: New Maps Show Annual Global Portrait of Fire

July 11, 2001 MODIS image of fires are indicated in red

Dramatic new satellite maps showing fire activity across the entire Earth for the past year are providing a unique picture of seasonal and yearly fire activity. The maps are a milestone in the use of satellite data for creating a long-term fire record that is crucial for understanding the impact offire on life and climate.

Using daily, global fire detection provided by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite, scientists at Goddard and the University of Maryland have been mapping fire activity for the entire surface of the Earth every day since February 2000. Never before have scientists had the opportunity to map fire across the entire Earth with such detail, accuracy, and frequency.

Christopher Justice, of the Department of Geography at University of Maryland, is the project's lead scientist. He says, Fire plays a central role in the Earth System. It impacts plant and animal habitat, air and water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, and human lives. MODIS' fire detection capabilities are a big step forward in satellite-based fire mapping. MODIS can detect fires across the entire Earth more accurately than any previous satellite sensor, and it has a higher temperature threshold, which means it can tell the temperature of even very hot fires." The near-daily global coverage gives scientists an excellent opportunity to study global fire behavior.

For more on the global fire maps, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020829globalfire.html