Forest fire is a big concern in many countries including Bhutan due to its adverse ecological and economic effects. A need for reliable and time effective information on fire is realized to be important as part of forest fire management. In view of its synoptic and high repetitive coverage, satellite data is found quite useful in fire detection and monitoring, and burnt area assessment on near real time basis. MODIS sensor on board Terra and Aqua satellites of NASA is extensively used for the purpose across the globe.

ICIMOD has developed a MODIS based forest fire detection and monitoring system for Bhutan in close collaboration with the Department of Forests and Park Services, Bhutan. The system facilitates data acquisition, processing and reporting on fire location information in an automated manner.

This interactive mapping application allows visualization of forest fire locations in the Bhutan region for any given date. In this application, user can select a certain time period and view the fire events using a time-slider tool.