MODIS Active Fire Detections for Northern and Central Africa

Near-real-time active fire and thermal anomaly detections covering Northern and Central Africa, derived from NASA's MODIS sensors on Terra and Aqua satellites. The data is provided by NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) and is continuously updated, typically within 3 hours of satellite acquisition. Files are available in SHP, KML, and CSV formats for time windows of the last 24 hours, 48 hours, and 7 days.

Use Cases

• Monitor near-real-time wildfire outbreaks based on thermal anomaly detections.
• Analyze fire frequency and distribution patterns across Northern and Central Africa.
• Model fire risk and land cover change using satellite-derived active fire locations.
• Support resource management and emergency response planning with continuously updated data.

Strengths

• Data is updated within approximately 3 hours of satellite acquisition, providing near-real-time utility.
• Covers a long temporal record, with Terra satellite data available since 2000 and Aqua since 2002.
• Offers multiple data formats (SHP, KML, CSV) and rolling time windows (24h, 48h, 7d) for flexibility.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS)

Collection Method

Satellite remote sensing via MODIS sensors on Terra and Aqua platforms.

Time Range

Terra data since 2000, Aqua data since 2002; files provide rolling windows (last 24h, 48h, 7d).

Freshness

Continuously updated; last metadata update was 2026-05-13 14:48:24.024049.

Geography

Northern and Central Africa