Prevalence of recent global wildfire activity, 2014-2019
An indication of the prevalence of recent global wildfire activity, calculated as the normalised difference between the annual average burnt area from January 2014 to December 2019 (the last five years of the MODIS record at the time of writing) and the long-term annual average burnt area (January 2001 to December 2019; based on the MODIS Fire_cci Burnt Area product; Chuvieco et al. 2018). In many regions, the return interval of wildfires may be longer than this illustrative period and many wildfire events may not be detectable at this scale. The red areas represent regions that have essentially increased in fire activity in the last five years compared to the long-term average, while the blue areas represent those where fire activity has decreased.
Year: 2022
From collection: Spreading Like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires
Cartographer: GRID-Arendal/Studio Atlantis