Using fires or hotspots data to determine lava flow
Using fires or hotspots data to determine lava flow
I'm trying to determine areas where lava flows in Iceland using satellite imagery (VIIRS or MODIS). My concern is determining which fires/hotspots is due to lava/volcanic activities instead of other reasons like brushfire. I realize that some of the data has a "type" attribute where 1 = active volcano. However this attribute isn't available on all of the data. Is there another way to determine lava flow? Can I use Brightness (temperature) attribute since this is consistently available. Thank you.
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FIRMS - dylan.mendes
- Subject Matter Expert
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- Joined: Tue May 13, 2025 2:45 pm America/New_York
Re: Using fires or hotspots data to determine lava flow
Hi @prillac ,
In FIRMS we have a layer that is dedicated to volcanos we get from an authoritative source. You can see that at the link here: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:countries,volcanoes=all,earth;@-17.5,64.5,7.4z Be aware that this is FIRMS in its advanced mode which contains a lot of functionality not available in basic mode.
As for determining lava flows, my best suggestion would be to set an alert for the area surrounding the volcano and you can be notifed when there is a new detection surrounding the area. There are also geostationary satellites that have more detection per day than MODIS or VIIRS do if that is something you're interested in. Please take a look at our FAQs here for information on the differnces and things like cloud cover which may hinder the viewing of such lava flows: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/tools/firms/faq
In FIRMS we have a layer that is dedicated to volcanos we get from an authoritative source. You can see that at the link here: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:countries,volcanoes=all,earth;@-17.5,64.5,7.4z Be aware that this is FIRMS in its advanced mode which contains a lot of functionality not available in basic mode.
As for determining lava flows, my best suggestion would be to set an alert for the area surrounding the volcano and you can be notifed when there is a new detection surrounding the area. There are also geostationary satellites that have more detection per day than MODIS or VIIRS do if that is something you're interested in. Please take a look at our FAQs here for information on the differnces and things like cloud cover which may hinder the viewing of such lava flows: https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/data/tools/firms/faq