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Fire Information for Resource Management System

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lklundin (talk | contribs) at 18:49, 20 October 2024 (→Specifications: Info on satellites and their orbits (SSO)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
NASA FIRMS
Screenshot of NASA FIRMS in a web browser
Type of site
Web mapping
OwnerNASA
URLhttps://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/firms
CommercialNo
RegistrationNo
LaunchedJanuary 2021; 4 years ago (2021-01)
Current statusActive

Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) is a free web mapping platform offered by NASA as part of its Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program. It displays active fire locations in near real-time overlaid on a map.[1][2]

While created to monitor wildfires,[1] it has also been used to report on fires due to military conflicts such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine[3] and the Tigray war.[4]

Specifications

Satellites

The data is collected via satellites in sun-synchronous orbit, making each satellite pass over the same location on Earth on the same time every the day. Each satellite crosses equator from North to South twelve times a day and also from South to North twelve times a day.

  • Aqua's ascending orbital path
    Aqua's ascending orbital path
  • Aqua's descending orbital path
    Aqua's descending orbital path
  • NOAA-20's descending orbital path
    NOAA-20's descending orbital path

Instruments

FIRMS offers a measurement tool to estimate distance or - as in this example - area of the Toropets depot explosions

The data is collected via MODIS (on board Terra and Aqua) and VIIRS (on board Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21) satellite instruments.[5] The spatial resolution of the MODIS instrument is 1 km × 1 km and 375 m × 375 m for VIIRS. This sets a lower limit on how accurately fires can be placed and whether a detection stems from a single larger or multiple smaller fires.[4] The detections are displayed on top of higher resolution imagery showing terrain details and each visualized detection is clickable to display its data, such as detection time, coordinates, satellite and instrument.

Development

FIRMS was developed by the University of Maryland in 2007 with NASA funds and from 2010 to 2012 a version of it was run by the UN's FAO.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c "About FIRMS". earthdata.nasa.gov. 8 April 2015. Retrieved 2024-09-22.
  2. ^ "FIRMS: Fire Information for Resource Management System". storymaps.arcgis.com. 2022-01-25. Retrieved 2024-09-22.
  3. ^ Burlaka, Oleksandr (2024-09-18). "Fire at a Russian missile depot". universemagazine.com. Retrieved 2024-09-22.
  4. ^ a b Gonzales, Carlos (2022-10-04). "Scorched Earth: Using NASA Fire Data to Monitor War Zones". Bellingcat. Retrieved 2024-09-22.
  5. ^ "Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS)". toolkit.climate.gov. Retrieved 2024-09-22.

Media related to FIRMS at Wikimedia Commons

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