Fire is a recurring part of nature. Wildfires can be caused by lightning striking a forest canopy or, in a few isolated cases, by lava or hot rocks ejected from erupting volcanoes. Most fires worldwide are started by humans, sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose. Not all fires are bad. Fire clears away dead and dying underbrush, which can help restore forest ecosystems to good health. Humans use fire as a tool in slash-and-burn agriculture to speed up the process of breaking down unwanted vegetation into the soil. Humans also use fire to clear away old-growth forests to make room for living spaces, roads, and fields for raising crops and cattle. But not all fires are good. Wildfires can destroy natural resources and human structures. Globally, fire plays a major role in Earth’s carbon cycle by releasing carbon into the air, and by consuming trees that would otherwise absorb carbon from the air during photosynthesis. These maps show the locations of actively burning fires around the world, detected by instruments aboard NASA satellites.
These data currently include monthly composites from January 2006 to present; data from earlier years of the Terra mission will be added as they are reprocessed.
