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Kevin Tansey and co-workers in the Department of Geography at the University of Leicester have produced a map of fire scars for every year since the turn of the Millennium.

The map covers the globe. It was funded by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and uses data from the Vegetation instrument on Spot-5. The map reveals that between 3.5 and 4.5 million square kilometres of vegetation burns on an annual basis.

The information is vital for scientists and agencies involved in monitoring global warming, since fires are a major source of atmospheric carbon. The news is not all bad, however. As the vegetation grows back, it becomes a major sink, fixing carbon out of the atmoshere.

Tansey, a lecturer in remote sensing, said: ‘With seven years of data, it is not possible to determine if there is a trend in the occurrence of fire, but we have significant year-to-year differences – of the order of 20 per cent – in the area that is burnt.’

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