Canadian wildfire data sources
Learn which direct official wildfire feeds, national continuity sources, NASA FIRMS hotspots, and ECCC FireWork smoke forecasts FireRadar uses and how the datasets differ.
Direct official incident feeds are preferred
FireRadar's Wildfires layer prioritizes direct public records from provincial and territorial wildfire authorities where a confirmed feed is available. If direct jurisdiction coverage is unavailable, degraded, or not integrated, validated national continuity can appear with distinct provenance. NASA FIRMS thermal detections and ECCC FireWork smoke model output remain separate datasets and are never silently counted as official wildfire incidents.
Official sources by province and territory
British Columbia
Official incident markers come from the BC Wildfire Service feed. Marker locations are informational and do not replace official emergency notices or local emergency instructions.
Alberta
Official incident status comes from Alberta Wildfire. FireRadar excludes records that do not meet the direct-feed active-status rules used by the public map.
Saskatchewan
Official incident rows come from the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency public wildfire data. Source dates and status fields are kept separate when the feed supplies them.
Manitoba
Official incident markers and out records are derived from Manitoba FireView where supplied. Follow Manitoba and local authorities for emergency decisions.
Ontario
Official active and new fire markers come from Ontario AFFES/LIO data. Marker data is informational and may not represent an exact perimeter.
Quebec
Official incident information comes from SOPFEU. FireRadar normalizes public status and cause labels for display while preserving unavailable fields as unavailable.
New Brunswick
Official wildfire records come from New Brunswick public data when available. Bilingual source values are normalized for the English FireRadar interface without inventing missing information.
Nova Scotia
Official location records come from Nova Scotia public wildfire data. Satellite hotspots remain a separate optional layer and are not confirmed incidents.
Prince Edward Island
CWFIS national records attributed to PEI are shown as context, not as a direct provincial incident total. PEI’s official Burning Restrictions page provides daily fire-condition information, not incident points.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Official wildfire records come from the provincial Forestry and Agrifoods public data. Status, cause, dates, and size are displayed only when the source supplies usable values.
Yukon
Official Yukon text records are the source of truth. Geometry is used as placement context only when FireRadar can match the official fire ID.
Northwest Territories
GNWT fire-detail pages are the source of truth. Matched geometry is placement context and may not be an exact perimeter.
Nunavut
CWFIS national records attributed to Nunavut are shown as context, not as a direct territorial incident total. Satellite detections remain a separate optional layer.
National continuity, satellite, and smoke sources
CWFIS national continuity
Natural Resources Canada's Canadian Wildland Fire Information System remains an upstream national source for FireRadar. FireRadar can use validated CWFIS records as explicitly labelled continuity when direct jurisdiction coverage is unavailable, degraded, or not integrated. CWFIS is not a separate user-selectable wildfire layer and its records are never relabelled as direct provincial or territorial records.
NASA FIRMS satellite hotspots
NASA FIRMS VIIRS detections indicate observed thermal activity. A hotspot is not automatically a confirmed wildfire, exact perimeter, or new incident. Detections can overlap official fires, repeat across satellite passes, or represent another heat source.
ECCC FireWork wildfire smoke forecast
Environment and Climate Change Canada's FireWork system provides numerical forecasts of wildfire-smoke contribution to ground-level PM2.5. FireRadar requests the latest valid model cycle and exposes hourly forecast frames for up to 72 hours. This model output is separate from observed AQHI, monitoring stations, health advisories, and incident records.
Dates and freshness are not interchangeable
First reported
When the source indicates the incident was first reported, discovered, or created.
Last updated
When the source indicates the incident record was last changed. FireRadar does not copy the first-reported time into this field merely to fill a blank.
Source update
A timestamp supplied by the source for the record or feed, when available.
FireRadar ingestion
When FireRadar last stored or refreshed the record. This is not presented as the incident's official last-updated time.
Smoke model cycle
The ECCC FireWork model initialization time used to generate the hourly smoke forecast frames. It is not an observation timestamp.
Smoke forecast valid time
The hour represented by the selected FireWork forecast frame. Conditions can differ from the model as weather and fire emissions evolve.
Coverage limitations
A failed or unavailable source is not equivalent to zero fires or zero smoke. FireRadar displays unavailable states rather than manufacturing counts, dates, sizes, causes, or air-quality claims. Prince Edward Island and Nunavut currently do not have confirmed direct official active-fire feeds wired into FireRadar; national continuity can provide supplementary context but is not direct local-authority coverage.
We document these sources so users can see exactly which agency or dataset supports each FireRadar view and where its limitations begin.
— The FireRadar team