The fire overview effect

The overview effect is the feeling and awareness reported by some astronauts when viewing the entire Earth during space-flight. Fire ecologists have our own overview effect! When remote sensed fire information was available for the first time at the global scale, it provided a magnificent and unprecedented view of the importance of fires on the Earth, and fires become a global issue. This remotely sensed information was a very valuable data because, for the first time, it was possible study some fire ecology processes at the global scale (for example [1]). Here is an animation for a 10 years period (2000-2010). It shows that on our planet, fires are widespread and something is always burning; we live in a flammable planet.

MODIS Rapid Response System Global Fire Maps, NASA. Each colored dot indicates a location where MODIS detected at least one fire during a 10-day period.

More global fire animations: youtube | Earth Observatory |

Reference

[1] Pausas J.G. & Ribeiro E. 2013. The global fire-productivity relationship. Global Ecol. & Biogeogr. 22: 728-736. [doi | pdf | appendix | erratum | blog]