GFIMS obtains the MODIS Burned Area data in HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) from the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP-DAAC) and processes them to produce global images for each calendar month using a custom color scale. The burned area images are derived from the 500m HDF files and resampled into Spatial resolutions of 16, 8, 4 and 2 km. These images are displayed in Web Fire Mapper.
The production of a single month of burned area detection requires a time series of 90 daily observations - the data for the month prior to and the month after the calendar month being processed are used. For example, to produce the calendar month data for September 2008, GFIMS uses the data from August 2008 and October 2008, in addition to September 2008. For this reason, the most recent monthly burned area image will only be available approximately 2 - 3 months behind the current month.