The MODIS Rapid Response System was developed to provide daily satellite images of the Earth's landmasses in near real time. True-color, photo-like imagery and false-color imagery are available within a few hours of being collected, making the system a valuable resource for organizations like the U.S. Forest Service and the international fire monitoring community, who use the images to track fires; the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service, who monitors crops and growing conditions; and the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Air Force Weather Agency, who track dust and ash in the atmosphere. The science community also uses the system in projects like the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET), which studies particles like smoke, pollution, or dust in the atmosphere. More information about science and application partners, including links, is provided on our applications page. Captioned interpreted images for educators, the media, and the public are available through the Earth Observatory. The system is freely available to everyone--scientists, operational users, educators, and the general public. Please see our Usage Guidelines.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flies onboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites as part of the NASA-centered international Earth Observing System. Both satellites orbit the Earth from pole to pole, seeing most of the globe every day. Onboard Terra, MODIS sees the Earth during the morning, while Aqua MODIS orbits the Earth in the afternoon.

Effective 18 August 2010:

Due to changes in our subset production system, we have stopped production of a few subsets which are in non-standard map projections - Iraq, RossSea, PalmerStation. These regions are all covered by subsets in one of our standard map projections. If you have any questions or concerns about these subset changes please contact our Outreach Coordinator.

28 July 2010:

One of our RAID units failed and, despite heroic efforts, our SysAdmin was not able to recover the data. Realtime and subset images from August 17 and 19, 2007, August 24, 2007 to January 4,2008, and March 3 to 10, 2009 were lost.

4 May 2010:

A new page with quick links to imagery of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and additional information about the imagery, is available.

The MODIS Rapid Response System generates complete mosaic images of Antarctica every day at 4km, 2km, 1km resolutions. The mosaic is composed of smaller image tiles, which are available individually at 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, and 4 km resolutions.

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The MODIS Rapid Response System generates complete mosaic images of the Arctic every day at 4km, 2km, 1km resolutions. The mosaic is composed of smaller image tiles, which are available individually at 250 m, 500 m, 1 km, 2 km, and 4 km resolutions.

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+ Download imagery

A large number of near-real-time georectified images across the world are available in our MODIS Rapid Response Subsets page in GIS-compatible format, including most AERONET sunphotometer sites.

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The Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) at the University of Maryland integrates remote sensing and GIS technologies to deliver global MODIS hotspot/fire locations to natural resource managers and other stakeholders around the World.

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The USFS's Remote Sensing Applications Center generates regional maps for the US fire managers using the active fire locations provided by the MODIS Rapid Response System, and also makes them available through an interactive ArcIMS interface over the conterminous United States, Alaska, and Canada.

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Global 10-day fire maps are generated using the MODIS Rapid Response fire locations to represent the current fire activity across the world.

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+ Fire location data

A large collection of MODIS Rapid response imagery can be found in the Earth Observatory's Natural Hazards section, with captions that provide pertinent information about each image.

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The MODIS Rapid Response imagery is used in a number of applications, including fire monitoring, burn area mapping, crop monitoring, flood mapping, and air quality monitoring.

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