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Full catalog/Wildfires_NWT_Canada_1548
Wildfires_NWT_Canada_1548·v1·dataset

How severely wildfires burned northern Canada (2015-2016)

ABoVE: Burn Severity, Fire Progression, and Field Data, NWT, Canada, 2015-2016
land NASA ORNL_CLOUD Level 2 CSV
In plain English

What it measures. How severely 2014 and 2015 wildfires burned across Canada's Northwest Territories, plus a map showing how the 2015 fires spread over time. It also records ground details like soil moisture, peat and thaw depth, regrowing seedlings, and plant cover.

How it's made. Built mainly from field surveys done on the ground in 2016, complemented by satellite observations from the Aqua and Terra missions.

How & where you'd use it. Helps scientists and land managers study how northern forests burn and recover, and how fire affects frozen ground and carbon-rich peat soils.

What's measured

LAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL TEMPERATUREBIOSPHERE › ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS › FIRE ECOLOGY › FIRE OCCURRENCELAND SURFACE › LAND USE/LAND COVER › LAND USE/LAND COVER CLASSIFICATIONBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › VEGETATION COVERLAND SURFACE › SOILS › SOIL MOISTURE/WATER CONTENTBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › DOMINANT SPECIESBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › BIOMASSBIOSPHERE › VEGETATION › PLANT CHARACTERISTICS

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span2015-05-20 → 2016-08-08
  • Measured byFIELD SURVEYS (SOIL TEMPERATURE PROBE, SOIL MOISTURE PROBE) · Aqua (MODIS) · Terra (MODIS)
  • Processing levelLevel 2
  • Spatial extent-135.543, 59.927, -106.759, 68.327
  • FormatsCSV
  • StatusCOMPLETE

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

This data set provides a fire progression map for year 2015 and measures of burn severity and vegetation community biophysical data collected from areas that were burned by wildfires in 2014 and 2015 in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Field data collected in 2016 include an estimate of burn severity, woody seedling/sprouting data, soil moisture, peat depth, thaw depth, and vegetation cover for selected sites.

Get the data

wildfires_nwt_canada_1548_access.py
import earthaccess
earthaccess.login(strategy="netrc")          # free Earthdata Login

results = earthaccess.search_data(
    short_name="Wildfires_NWT_Canada_1548",
    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_CLOUD
Browsing CMR needs no login. Downloading or streaming bytes needs a free Earthdata Login + the earthaccess package.