This layer presents detectable thermal activity from MODIS satellites for the last 7 days. MODIS Global Fires is a product of NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), part of NASA's Earth Science Data. EOSDIS integrates remote sensing and GIS technologies to deliver global MODIS hotspot/fire locations to natural resource managers and other stakeholders around the World.

Consumption Best Practices:

As a service that is subject to very high usage, ensure peak performance and accessibility of your maps and apps by avoiding the use of non-cacheable relative Date/Time field filters. To accommodate filtering events by Date/Time, we suggest using the included "Age" fields that maintain the number of days or hours since a record was created or last modified, compared to the last service update. These queries fully support the ability to cache a response, allowing common query results to be efficiently provided to users in a high demand service environment.
When ingesting this service in your applications, avoid using POST requests whenever possible. These requests can compromise performance and scalability during periods of high usage because they too are not cacheable.

Source: NASA FIRMS - Active Fire Data - for World

Scale/Resolution: 1km

Update Frequency: 1/2 Hour (every 30 minutes) using the Aggregated Live Feed Methodology

Area Covered: World

What can I do with this layer?
The MODIS thermal activity layer can be used to visualize and assess wildfires worldwide. However, it should be noted that this dataset contains many “false positives” (e.g., oil/natural gas wells or volcanoes) since the satellite will detect any large thermal signal.

Additional Information

MODIS stands for MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. The MODIS instrument is on board NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra (EOS AM) and Aqua (EOS PM) satellites. The orbit of the Terra satellite goes from north to south across the equator in the morning and Aqua passes south to north over the equator in the afternoon resulting in global coverage every 1 to 2 days. The EOS satellites have a ±55 degree scanning pattern and orbit at 705 km with a 2,330 km swath width.

It takes approximately 2 – 4 hours after satellite overpass for MODIS Rapid Response to process the data, and for the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) to update the website. Occasionally, hardware errors can result in processing delays beyond the 2-4 hour range. Additional information on the MODIS system status can be found at MODIS Rapid Response.

Attribute Information

Latitude and Longitude: The center point location of the 1km (approx.) pixel flagged as containing one or more fires/hotspots (fire size is not 1km, but variable). Stored by Point Geometry. See What does a hotspot/fire detection mean on the ground?
Brightness: The brightness temperature measured (in Kelvin) using the MODIS channels 21/22 and channel 31.
Scan and Track: The actual spatial resolution of the scanned pixel. Although the algorithm works at 1km resolution, the MODIS pixels get bigger toward the edge of the scan. See What does scan and track mean?
Date and Time: Acquisition date of the hotspot/active fire pixel and time of satellite overpass in UTC (client presentation in local time). Stored by Acquisition Date.
Acquisition Date: Derived Date/Time field combining Date and Time attributes.
Satellite: Whether the detection was picked up by the Terra or Aqua satellite.
Confidence: The detection confidence is a quality flag of the individual hotspot/active fire pixel.
Version: Version refers to the processing collection and source of data. The number before the decimal refers to the collection (e.g. MODIS Collection 6). The number after the decimal indicates the source of Level 1B data; data processed in near-real time by MODIS Rapid Response will have the source code “CollectionNumber.0”. Data sourced from MODAPS (with a 2-month lag) and processed by FIRMS using the standard MOD14/MYD14 Thermal Anomalies algorithm will have a source code “CollectionNumber.x”. For example, data with the version listed as 5.0 is collection 5, processed by MRR, data with the version listed as 5.1 is collection 5 data processed by FIRMS using Level 1B data from MODAPS.
Bright.T31: Channel 31 brightness temperature (in Kelvins) of the hotspot/active fire pixel.
FRP: Fire Radiative Power. Depicts the pixel-integrated fire radiative power in MW (MegaWatts). FRP provides information on the measured radiant heat output of detected fires. The amount of radiant heat energy liberated per unit time (the Fire Radiative Power) is thought to be related to the rate at which fuel is being consumed (Wooster et. al. (2005)).
DayNight: The standard processing algorithm uses the solar zenith angle (SZA) to threshold the day/night value; if the SZA exceeds 85 degrees it is assigned a night value. SZA values less than 85 degrees are assigned a day time value. For the NRT algorithm the day/night flag is assigned by ascending (day) vs descending (night) observation. It is expected that the NRT assignment of the day/night flag will be amended to be consistent with the standard processing.
Hours Old: Derived field that provides age of record in hours between Acquisition date/time and latest update date/time. 0 = less than 1 hour ago, 1 = less than 2 hours ago, 2 = less than 3 hours ago, and so on.

Revisions

June 22, 2022: Added 'HOURS_OLD' field to enhance Filtering data. Added 'Last 7 days' Layer to extend data to match time range of VIIRS offering. Added Field level descriptions.

This map is provided for informational purposes and is not monitored 24/7 for accuracy and currency.

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