{"slug":"wildfires","title":"Wildfires","homepageTitle":"Wildfires & Burned Areas","singular":"wildfire","sources":[{"id":"effis","label":"EFFIS","name":"EFFIS Rapid Damage Assessment — burned areas","provider":"European Commission Joint Research Centre / Copernicus EMS","color":"#9a642b","citation":"European Commission, Joint Research Centre. European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), Rapid Damage Assessment burned-area polygons, WFS modis.ba.poly. Downloaded 7 September 2026.","license":"CC BY 4.0, European Union. Changes: display anchors, normalized attributes and derived geometry measurements. Original source attributes retained.","url":"https://forest-fire.emergency.copernicus.eu/applications/data-and-services","note":"Complete publicly downloadable WFS boundary archive at acquisition. Coverage is primarily Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Mapped boundaries and detection dates can be revised; coverage is limited by sensor resolution, monitoring methods and available imagery. These are burned-area observations, not a complete census of ignitions."},{"id":"mtbs","label":"USGS / USFS MTBS","name":"Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity — national burned-area boundaries","provider":"U.S. Geological Survey / USDA Forest Service","color":"#1e3a5f","citation":"U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service (2026). Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity Burned Areas Boundaries for 1984–2026. Metadata publication date 6 September 2026. Downloaded 7 September 2026.","license":"U.S. federal public data. Credit USGS, USDA Forest Service and MTBS. The derived GeoJSON uses WGS84; original NAD83 shapefiles remain available from the provider.","url":"https://burnseverity.cr.usgs.gov/direct-download","note":"Complete published national perimeter archive. Includes wildfires and prescribed fires, with the original fire type retained. Monitoring targets fires larger than 1,000 acres in the western U.S. and 500 acres in the eastern U.S.; omitted or unmappable burns and smaller fires prevent complete occurrence coverage."}],"coverageLabel":"Europe, MENA & U.S.","intro":"Explore EFFIS and MTBS burned-area boundaries, wildfires and prescribed burns with source evidence, mapped extent and statistics.","coverage":"Published source records span 1984–2026. EFFIS covers its monitored regions; MTBS covers the United States. This is a dated archive, not a live fire feed.","countNote":"Counts describe mapped source boundaries, not independently deduplicated fires. MTBS event identifiers connect related assessments. Prescribed burns remain distinct from wildfires. A pin marks an interior point of a boundary; it does not locate the ignition.","statisticsNote":"Statistics apply to complete source records matching the filters. Differences in monitoring thresholds, resolution, coverage and fire type prevent direct interpretation as global hazard trends. Unknown values remain missing. Perimeter measurements depend on map detail. Overlapping footprints must not be summed as a unique burned area.","measurementNote":"Reported area is kept separate from area calculated from the geometry. MTBS acres are converted using 1 acre = 0.40468564224 ha. EFFIS date intervals span detection dates, not continuous active burning. Prescribed fires are identified by their original source type.","methods":"All 137,028 downloaded source shapes are retained as records. Source geometries are converted to WGS84; representative points supply map anchors. Valid polygons are measured on the WGS84 ellipsoid, subtracting holes for area and including inner boundaries in perimeter. 74 invalid, empty or unsupported geometries are excluded from derived measurements. 0 repeated native identifiers receive a source-row suffix while retaining their original ID. Original shapefile archives and metadata remain available at the linked providers. MTBS text uses the ISO-8859-1 encoding declared in its accompanying CPG file.","definition":"A wildfire is an unplanned fire burning in vegetation such as forests, grasslands or shrublands. A burned-area boundary maps the affected footprint. Prescribed fires are planned burns and are identified separately in this collection.","definitionUrl":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/types-of-wildland-fire.htm","definitionSource":"National Park Service — Types of Wildland Fire","diagramAlt":"A plan-view schematic distinguishes an ignition point, a burned-area boundary and surviving unburned patches inside it.","diagramCaption":"A mapped burned-area footprint can contain unburned patches. The overview pin is a display anchor. Schematic; not a real fire.","diagram":"Reading a burned-area boundaryDisplay anchorMapped perimeterUnburned patchA map boundary does not show the ignition point or fire progression.","fields":[{"key":"areaHa","label":"Reported burned area","description":"Area supplied by the provider. EFFIS hectares are retained; MTBS acres are converted to hectares. Overlapping assessments are not deduplicated.","type":"numeric","unit":"ha","group":"Measurements"},{"key":"computedAreaHa","label":"Measured boundary area","description":"WGS84 ellipsoidal area of valid polygon geometry, subtracting holes. May differ from the provider’s area because of mapping and calculation methods.","type":"numeric","unit":"ha","group":"Measurements"},{"key":"perimeter","label":"Mapped perimeter","description":"Ellipsoidal length of outer and inner polygon boundaries. Depends strongly on mapping detail and fragmentation.","type":"numeric","unit":"m","group":"Measurements"},{"key":"intervalDays","label":"Detection date interval","description":"Days from first to final EFFIS detection date. Not a measured duration of continuous burning.","type":"numeric","unit":"days","group":"Measurements"},{"key":"year","label":"Reported year","description":"EFFIS first-detection year or MTBS ignition year. Different observation systems and coverage affect chronology.","type":"numeric","group":"Chronology","scale":"linear"},{"key":"month","label":"Seasonality: reported month","description":"Calendar month of EFFIS first detection or MTBS ignition. Coverage and source method affect seasonality. Month is categorical because the calendar is cyclic.","type":"categorical","group":"Chronology","valueLabels":{"1":"January","2":"February","3":"March","4":"April","5":"May","6":"June","7":"July","8":"August","9":"September","10":"October","11":"November","12":"December"}},{"key":"country","label":"Country","description":"Provider country, with EFFIS ISO codes expanded where known.","type":"categorical","group":"Location"},{"key":"source","label":"Source collection","description":"Source agency and inventory.","type":"categorical","group":"Provenance"},{"key":"fireType","label":"Reported fire type","description":"MTBS distinguishes wildfires from prescribed fires. EFFIS polygons do not establish an ignition cause.","type":"categorical","group":"Provenance"},{"key":"assessment","label":"Source assessment","description":"Provider assessment type or monitoring class; these are not interchangeable quality grades.","type":"categorical","group":"Provenance"},{"key":"kind","label":"Record geometry","description":"A mapped burned-area boundary represented by an interior display pin.","type":"categorical","group":"Provenance"}],"shardSize":250,"acquired":"7 September 2026","preparedAt":"2026-09-07T01:51:36.991314+00:00","recordCount":137028}