A Look Back at a Decade of Fires

  • Released Thursday, October 20, 2011
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For more than a decade, instruments on Terra and Aqua, two of NASA's flagship Earth-observing satellites, have scanned the surface of our planet for fires four times a day. The instruments, both Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS), have revolutionized what scientists know about fire's role in land cover change, ecosystem processes, and the global carbon cycle by allowing researchers to map the characteristics and global distribution of fires in remarkable detail. The collection of videos below provides perspective on how global fires impact humans and our planet.

Fire observations from around the world taken over nearly 10 years are shown in this visualization of NASA satellite data.

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UC Irvine scientist Jim Randerson talks about how fires influence climate.

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NASA scientist Amber Soja talks about the impact of fire on human health and air quality.

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University of Maryland scientist Chris Justice explains how some fires are essential to maintaining the ecosystem.

For complete transcript, click here.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/modis-10.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Thursday, October 20, 2011.
This page was last updated on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 12:15 AM EDT.

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Tapes

The media on this page originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • NASA.gov Fires Package (ID: 2011110)
    Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 4:00AM

Datasets used

  • Fire Location [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 496
    Sensor: MODIS Dates used: June 2002 through July 2011

    Credit: Fire location data courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project (NASA/GSFC and University of Maryland - http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov)

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  • NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 633
    Sensor: MODIS Collected by: NASA Dates used: June 2002 through July 2011
    See all pages that use this dataset

  • Ice and Snow (Pixel Reliability (value=2)) [Terra and Aqua: MODIS]

    ID: 714
    Type: Analysis Sensor: MODIS
    See all pages that use this dataset

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.