Monitoring forest fires enables, as far as possible, timely action to prevent natural disasters. Modern developments of specialists in the field of space research allow remote use of the fire information system.
The most famous fire tracking system today is FIRMS (The Fire Information for Resource Management System). It is developed at the University of Maryland and is supported by FAO and NASA. Covering the entire world, the system provides quality information on the location of recent medium and large forest fires. The development is based on satellite imagery. FIRMS allows you to view the necessary data in the Google Earth program and "tie" fires to the nearest settlements, peatlands, roads, water sources, etc.
For self-monitoring of fires, go to the FIRMS website. Depending on what exactly interests you, select one of the tabs from the menu: active fires (Active Fire Data), burned areas (Burned Area) or an online map of burnt areas and active fires (Web Mapping Services). On the map, which opens from the Web Fire Mapper tab, fires for the last 24, 48, 72 hours or for the past week are displayed as dots.
To quickly detect fires across the country, install the Google Earth program on your computer. In the main FIRMS menu, find the Active Fire Data tab. Select the region Russia and Asia and set the time period you are interested in. As a result, a file with the kml extension will be saved with the necessary information on the location of fires. Open this file in Google Earth. When you hover over the fire icon, useful information will be displayed in the window: the probability of a fire (confidence), the date of its registration, information about the camera, coordinates, etc.
To customize the appearance of the icons, right-click on the layer with the name (Russia and Asia 24h MODIS Hotspots). In the menu that opens, find the "Properties" item and click on the fire icon on the right. To zoom and move in Google Earth, use the mouse or the control buttons in the upper right corner of the screen.
