GFMC EARLY WARNING PORTAL: DAILY GLOBAL AND REGIONAL FIRE WEATHER AND CLIMATE FORECASTS & BACKGROUND MATERIALS
NOAA/NESDIS Fire Risk and Vegetation Health Indices Products
The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offers a Fire Risk Index (FRI) that is showing if vegetation conditions are suitable for fire development. The Fire Risk Index is part of the Global Vegetation Health website that contains several Vegetation Health Indices (VHI) derived from the radiance observed by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on board the NOAA-7, 9, 11, 14, 16 and 18 afternoon polar-orbiting satellites.
The NOAA/NESDIS Fire Risk Index (FRI)
This product is based on the estimated intensity and duration of vegetation stress which can be used as a proxy for assessment of fire potential and danger. It combines two satellite-based indices – the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and thermal data from the NOAA AVHRR sensors. Area, intensity, and duration of vegetation stress, fire potential and danger can be estimated from colour-coded maps covering all continents.
Latest weekly global fire risk index map (Source: NOAA/NESDIS Global Vegetation Health: Current Week’s Products)
The Fire Risk Index (FRI) is also available as subsets for the following regions and countries:
— World
— N.America
— S.America
— Africa
— Europe
— Asia
— Australia
— USA– Mexico
— Argentina
— Brazil
— S. Africa
— Former Soviet Union
— China
— India
Other Vegetation Health Indices:
The VHI can be used as proxy data for monitoring vegetation health, drought, moisture and thermal conditions, fire risk, greenness of vegetation cover, vegetation fraction, leave area index, start/end of the growing season, crop and pasture productivity, teleconnection with ENSO, desertification, mosquito-borne diseases, invasive species, ecological resources, land degradation etc.
The following indices are available:
— Vegetation Health (VHI),
— Vegetation Condition Index (VCI),
— Temperature Condition Index (TCI),
— Smoothed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (SMN),
— Smoothed Brightness Temperature (SMT),
— Fire Risk Index (FRI) — Drought
— Malaria
— ENSO/Land Ecosystem Interaction
— Time Series
— Start of the growing season
— Ecosystem Resources
(updated 30 June 2010)
