How badly fires burned the land (Alaska & Canada, 1985-2015)
What it measures. A map of how severely wildfires burned the land across Alaska and Canada between 1985 and 2015. Each 30-meter pixel carries a burn-severity score (called dNBR) that compares how the ground looked just before a fire to how it looked afterward.
How it's made. Built by pairing Landsat 5, 7, and 8 satellite images taken before and after each fire and measuring the change in surface reflection within mapped fire boundaries (only fires larger than about 200 hectares were included).
How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists and land managers see where fires hit hardest, study how boreal forests recover, and understand the role of northern wildfires in the carbon cycle.
What's measured
Coverage & cadence
- Time span1985-01-01 → 2015-12-31
- Measured byLANDSAT-8 (OLI) · LANDSAT-5 (TM) · LANDSAT-7 (ETM+)
- Processing levelLevel 4
- Spatial extent-168.424, 50.2542, -101.736, 71.3558
- Formatsmultiple
- StatusCOMPLETE
What you can do with it
- Map vegetation, forests and biomass
- Monitor ecosystem productivity and carbon
- Support habitat and biodiversity studies
Official description
This dataset contains differenced Normalized Burned Ratio (dNBR) at 30-m resolution calculated for burn scars from fires that occurred within the Arctic Boreal and Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) Project domain in Alaska and Canada during 1985-2015. The fire perimeters were obtained from the Alaskan Interagency Coordination Center (AICC) and the Natural Resources Canada (NRC) fire occurrence datasets. Only burns with an area larger than 200-ha were included. The dNBR for each burn scar at 30-m pixel resolution was derived from pre- and post-burn Landsat 5, 7, and 8 scenes within a 5-km buffered area surrounding each burn scar using Landsat LEDAPS surface reflection image pairs.
Get the data
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc") # free Earthdata Login
results = earthaccess.search_data(
short_name="ABoVE_Fire_Severity_dNBR_1564",
version="1",
bounding_box=(-122.5, 37.2, -121.8, 37.9), # your area (W,S,E,N)
temporal=("2024-01-01", "2024-12-31"), # your dates
)
files = earthaccess.open(results) # stream straight from ORNL_CLOUDBrowsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package. Official links
- Earthdata Search allows users to search, discover, visualize, refine, and access NASA Earth Observation data. GET DATA
- Collection Bundle URL GET DATA
- ORNL DAAC Data Set Documentation VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- A pdf of the guide document VIEW RELATED INFORMATION
- ABoVE: Landsat-derived Burn Scar dNBR across Alaska and Canada, 2013-2015: ABoVE_Burn_Severity_Product_Users_Guide.pdf VIEW RELATED INFORMATION