Layers
BackgroundLegend
What the map shows
Each dot is a NASA VIIRS 375 m active-fire alert in the current fire season (), coloured by month. One fire can produce several alerts over several days, and smoke or cloud can hide fires, so alert counts show fire activity, not burned area.
Comparing years
Every province, district, protected area and Key Biodiversity Area is compared with the same calendar period in every year since . "Rank" is the position of this season among all those years (1 = highest).
Satellites. Until 21 October 2026 the alerts are the Global Forest Watch VIIRS dataset, which is the VNP14IMGT product from the Suomi NPP satellite only, so the record since 2012 comes from one sensor. NOAA stops delivering Suomi NPP data on 2 November 2026 at 13:00 UTC, so from 22 October 2026 new alerts come directly from NASA FIRMS, from NOAA-20 (VIIRS, same 375 m product), with NOAA-21 kept as a backup. A notice at the top of the page shows when alerts from another satellite are included.
Comparing satellites. NOAA-20 detects a different number of alerts than Suomi NPP: its orbit is about 50 minutes apart, and on any one day the two can differ by a factor of two or more. To keep the comparison with 2012–2025 fair, NOAA-20 counts are converted to Suomi NPP equivalents with a factor measured over the seasons when both satellites flew (2018–2026). The factor in use is shown in the notice. Until it is set, counts from NOAA-20 are shown as observed.
Gaps in 2026. Suomi NPP had two outages this season. There are no alerts for 11–16 July 2026, and none for 3 August and the daytime pass of 4 August. NASA later excluded Suomi NPP data from 3 August 02:00 UTC to 6 August 16:24 UTC from standard processing; the near-real-time alerts for 4–6 August (about 1,600 for PNG) remain in the Global Forest Watch data. Because of the gaps, this season's totals slightly understate fire activity.
Data freshness. If the newest alerts are more than three days old, or the page has not been rebuilt for 36 hours, a warning appears at the top of the page.
Confidence. Each alert has a confidence of low, nominal or high. Use "Exclude low-confidence alerts" to drop low-confidence alerts everywhere on the dashboard. In tests for Western Province, excluding them changed totals by 7–14% and barely changed comparisons between years, so all alerts are shown by default, as on Global Forest Watch.
Layers and sources
| Layer | Source | Licence or terms |
|---|---|---|
| Fire alerts | NASA VIIRS 375 m active fires: Suomi NPP via the GFW Data API to 21 Oct 2026; NOAA-20 from NASA FIRMS from 22 Oct 2026 | NASA open data policy |
| Provinces and districts | OCHA COD-AB, PNG National Statistical Office | CC BY-IGO |
| Protected areas | UNEP-WCMC and IUCN (2025), Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), December 2025 release, Cambridge, UK. protectedplanet.net. Shown through GFW tiles. | WDPA terms: non-commercial; boundaries shown but not downloadable; counts per area are a derived analysis |
| Key Biodiversity Areas | BirdLife International (2025), World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas, September 2025 version, developed by the KBA Partnership. keybiodiversityareas.org. Shown through GFW tiles. | KBA terms: non-commercial; boundaries shown but not downloadable; counts per KBA are a derived analysis |
| Intact forest landscapes | Potapov et al. / intactforests.org, GFW tiles | CC BY 4.0 |
| Primary forest 2001 | Turubanova et al. (UMD), GFW tiles | CC BY 4.0 |
| Peatlands, mangroves | GFW peatlands composite; Global Mangrove Watch 2020 | See globalforestwatch.org |
| Satellite imagery, street map | Esri World Imagery; OpenStreetMap | Attribution shown on maps |
Each alert also carries GFW's flags for tree cover, primary forest, intact forest, KBA, protected area, peatland, mangrove, managed forest and mining concessions, and LandMark indigenous and community lands. These give the "Where the alerts fall" breakdown.
How it updates
A scheduled job runs twice a day. It checks Global Forest Watch for new alerts and, when there are any, rebuilds every number, map and PDF report. Last update: .
Limitations
- A fire alert is a hot 375 m pixel seen by the satellite. One fire can produce many alerts, and small or brief fires are missed.
- Protected area and KBA boundaries vary in accuracy, and some areas are missing from the global databases or out of date.
- Counts inside a protected area or KBA use its official boundary. Ring counts include alerts within the set distance outside it, measured in its own UTM zone.
- District and province names and boundaries are the 2019 OCHA set (22 provinces, 87 districts).