FIRMS US/Canada is the result of an agreement between the U.S. Forest Service and NASA to modernize the Forest Service's distribution of active fire information by leveraging FIRMS web-based active fire mapping tools and capabilities for disseminating data, products and services.
The significance of this NASA-Forest Service partnership goes beyond the creation of FIRMS US/Canada. It establishes a single, authoritative source of near real-time fire mapping, visualization, and geospatial data products and information for the United States and Canada jointly supported and enabled by both agencies. This enhanced cooperation will boost the availability of selected contextual geospatial data to increase the utility of near real-time fire geospatial data products, as well as increase opportunities, under the auspices of LANCE, to evaluate and integrate additional sources of NASA, NOAA, and international space agency satellite data of value to the user community.
What active fire data and imagery are available in FIRMS US/Canada?
*Other data and imagery sources are available for global coverage. See the FIRMS Global table.
| Product | Sensor (Platform) | Source | Spatial Resolution | Latency4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polar orbiting Active Fire Detections | MODIS (Terra/Aqua) | SSEC Univ of Wisconsin | 1km | <1-30 mins |
| Polar orbiting Active Fire Detections | VIIRS (Suomi NPP/NOAA-20) | SSEC Univ of Wisconsin | 375m | <1-30 mins |
| Polar orbiting Active Fire Detections | MODIS (Terra/Aqua) | NASA LANCE | 1km | <3 hours |
| Polar orbiting Active Fire Detections | VIIRS (Suomi NPP/NOAA-20) | NASA LANCE | 375m | <3 hours |
| Polar orbiting Active Fire Detections | OLI (Landsat 8 & 9) | USGS EROS5 | 30m | 30-60 mins |
| Provisional Geostationary Active Fire Detections | ABI (GOES-16 & 18)1 | NOAA | 2km sub-satellite2 | ~20-30 mins |
| Provisional Geostationary Active Fire Detections | ABI (GOES-16 & 18)3 | CAMS/IPMA | 2km sub-satellite2 | ~20-30 mins |
| True/False Color Composite Imagery | ABI (GOES-16 & 18) | NASA GIBS | 1km | 40 mins |
| True/False Color Composite Imagery | MODIS (Terra/Aqua) | NASA GIBS | 250m | <3 hours |
| True/False Color Composite Imagery | VIIRS (Suomi NPP/NOAA-20) | NASA GIBS | 250m | <3 hours |
| True/False Color Composite Imagery | OLI (Landsat 8 & 9) | NASA IMPACT/HLS | 30m | 2-4 days |
| True/False Color Composite Imagery | MSI (Sentinel 2A & 2B) | NASA IMPACT/HLS | 30m | 2-4 days |
| Aerosol Index | OMPS (Suomi NPP) | NASA LANCE/GIBS | ~50km | <3 hours |
| Aerosol Index PyroCumuloNimbus | OMPS (Suomi NPP) | NASA LANCE/GIBS | ~50km | <3 hours |
| Burned Area | MODIS (Terra/Aqua) | NASA | 500m | ~3 months |
2The pixel size systematically grows from sub-satellite towards the edge of the disk
3FRPPIXEL: Fire Radiative Power algorithm
4Latency refers to the estimated time from satellite observation to availability in FIRMS
5Currently curated for FIRMS US/Canada
See Acronyms section for definitions.
What specific areas are covered by FIRMS US/Canada?
FIRMS US/Canada includes coverage for the continental United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Canada. Due to the geographic extent of these areas of interest, Mexico and Caribbean countries are also included.
What are the differences between FIRMS Global and FIRMS US/Canada?
Just like FIRMS Global, FIRMS US/Canada provides active fire data generally within 3 hours of a satellite observation from MODIS aboard NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites and VIIRS aboard the Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 satellites. Imagery is typically available within 3 to 4 hours and can be viewed on the interactive Fire Map application.
In addition, FIRMS US/Canada meets the new Forest Service requirements by offering additional contextual layers and enhancements, including classifying fires to show time since detection to depict active fire fronts, incident locations and other information for current large fires in the US and Canada. FIRMS US/Canada provides current and historical corrected reflectance imagery from NASA and NOAA satellites, U.S. and Canada administrative ownership boundaries, daily fire danger forecasts, and current National Weather Service fire weather watch and red flag warning areas.
What is the source for the USA Active Fires layer and what information does it provide?
The USA Active Fires layer is based on information from the Integrated Reporting of Wildland Fire Information (IRWIN) service maintained by the U.S. Department of Interior Office of Wildland Fire. IRWIN harvests and integrates information from numerous federal, state, and local wildfire reporting systems in near real-time to provide a single source of current information about all reported wildfire incidents. The USA Active Fires layer displays the location of current wildfires greater than 100 acres (40 hectares) in size and selected descriptive information, including fire name, latest reported size, and date/time of ignition. The displayed wildfire location is typically based on the identified or assumed point of origin of the fire.
What is the source of the Canada Active Fires layer and what information does it provide?
The Canada Active Fires layer is based on information from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System Active Wildfires dataset coordinated and maintained by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC) and Natural Resources Canada. Reported wildfire locations are updated and provided daily by partner provincial and territorial fire management agencies and Parks Canada. The Canada Active Fires layer displays the location of current wildfires greater than 100 acres (40 hectares) in size and selected descriptive information, including fire name/ID, latest reported size, and date/time of ignition.
Where can I get more information about current wildfires in the U.S. and Canada?
Additional information about current large wildfires in the United States can be found in the Incident Management Situation Report published by the National Interagency Coordination Center. Additional information about current large wildfires in Canada can be found in the National Fire Situation Report published by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC).
What is the source for USA Fire Weather Watches and Red Flag Warnings and what do they mean?
The National Weather Service (NWS) is the source for fire weather watches and red flag warnings. A fire weather watch or red flag warning is issued by local/regional NWS forecast offices when the combination of dry fuels and weather conditions in designated NWS fire weather zones support extreme fire danger. Criteria for fire weather watches and red flag warnings vary by NWS office, but are typically based on the presence of fuel characteristics favorable for large fire growth, as determined by the land management agencies, and NWS-established critical thresholds for temperature, sustained winds, and relative humidity. Fire weather watches are issued up to 72 hours before these conditions are expected to occur while red flag warnings are issued when these conditions are expected to occur or are occurring within the next 24 hours. A similar layer for Canada is currently not available.
What is the source for the USA Forecasted Fire Danger layer and what information does it provide?
The Forecasted Fire Danger layer is based on the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), which produces several components and indexes (e.g., ignition probability, fire rate of spread, etc.) that collectively describe current and potential fire danger conditions. Daily forecasted fire danger updates are used by wildland fire management agencies to assess current fire danger at local and national levels and inform decisions on an area’s fire protection needs. NFDRS fire danger is expressed as an adjective class rating that normalizes rating classes across different fuel models, indexes, and station locations.
What is the source for the Canada Forecasted Fire Danger layer and what information does it provide?
The Canada Fire Danger forecast layer is a relative index of how easy it is to ignite vegetation, how difficult a fire may be to control, and how much damage a fire may do. These ratings, updated and mapped daily, are based on the effects of fuel moisture and weather conditions on fire behavior as determined by the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. Fire danger conditions are classified by the provincial and territorial fire management agencies and the choice and interpretation of classes may vary between provinces.
What is the source for the United States wildfire perimeters and what does it display?
The US Fire Perimeter layer displays the extent of current wildfires based on perimeter data from the National Incident Feature Service (NIFS) maintained by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). Incident management teams for individual wildfire incidents are the source for these data. Input data/information sources for routine perimeter updates conducted by incident management teams, as well as the update frequency, can vary.
How do I interpret/use wildfire perimeter data in the context of satellite active fire detection data?
Wildfire perimeters for individual fires are typically updated once daily using relatively large scale data (airborne infrared flights, airborne or terrestrial GPS, etc.), but may be updated more or less frequently in particular circumstances. MODIS and VIIRS active fire detection data introduce additional factors that can contribute spatial and temporal alignment between these data and perimeters for ongoing wildfire incidents. These factors include:
- Timing of satellite observations: MODIS and VIIRS are onboard polar-orbiting satellite platforms that do not provide persistent observations. They only detect the location and extent of active fires at the time of a satellite overpass. This may result in gaps in active fire detection data within perimeters.
- Properties of fire activity and active fire detection data resolution: The size and intensity of fires at the time of a satellite overpass, including small, very hot fires and larger, smoldering fires, can both trigger fire detection algorithms. In both conditions, the detected fire activity will be indicated at the spatial resolution of the thermal bands (375 m for VIIRS and 1 km for MODIS). In other words, a small, intense fire occupying a fraction of the pixel or a broader, cooler-burning fire occupying most of the pixel will both be represented as a fire at the spatial resolution of the data. This typically results in cumulative active fire detection data overestimating the size of a wildfire and not aligning with the perimeter boundaries.
- Satellite observation conditions: Atmospheric conditions, including clouds and heavy smoke, can partially or fully obscure fire activity at the time of a satellite overpass and hinder its detection. This omission of potentially detected fire activity can result in gaps in active fire detection data within perimeters. Additionally, the view geometry becomes more distorted with increasing distance from the nadir of the satellite observation. As a result, active fire detections in pixels towards the outer edges of the satellite view swath will be shifted/displaced outwards and fall outside the wildfire perimeter.
Are additional capabilities planned for FIRMS US/Canada?
Yes. The beta release of FIRMS US/Canada was completed in January 2021. Ongoing development activities include introduction of more remote sensing layers in the fire map viewer, particularly additional sources of near real-time satellite imagery and fire-relevant science data products, and enhancements to data downloads and user-defined fire alerts.
More about the Ultra Real-Time (URT) and Real-Time (RT) data in FIRMS
Ultra Real-Time (URT) MODIS and VIIRS active fire detections are available for the US and Canada. These data are compiled from multiple direct readout ground stations in CONUS as part of a partnership with the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. MODIS and VIIRS micro granules collected via direct broadcast are processed in seconds and made available in FIRMS within 1-2 minutes of satellite observation. The attributes of these URT data have a "version" ending in URT. (To obtain the attributes, zoom in and click on a MODIS or VIIRS active fire detection in FIRMS Map viewer, and review the VERSION column).
Real-Time (RT) MODIS active fire detections are available through Direct Broadcast stations that process the data after the overpass has occurred. These data are generally available in FIRMS 20-25 minutes after satellite observation.
See the Questions about Real-Time (RT) and Ultra Real-Time (URT) active fire data section for more information.
Additional direct readout ground stations are being incrementally added to FIRMS. These additions will further increase the availability of URT MODIS and VIIRS data for North America collected from Terra, Aqua, Suomi NPP and NOAA-20.