Boundary of the 2026 Cairngorms Wildfire

This dataset provides best available burn data from 3 different sources:

1) Individual wildfires mapped by NatureScot, usually where they impact on protected sites. Taken from Sentinel-2 imagery Spatial accuracy: very high.

2) Data from the European Forest Fire Information System. Taken from MODIS satellite. Spatial accuracy: moderate. Burns are correctly identified by spatial boundaries more generalised owing to the spatial resolution of the sensor.

3) Semi-automated wildfire and muirburn detection by NatureScot using all available Sentinel-2 imagery and a threshold detection algorithm. Spatial accuracy: variable - often high in patches of muirburn (though some patches will be missed), lower over wildfires and/or grassland habitats.



Burns have been manually checked so there will be few false positives. However some burn patches will have been missed, perhaps individual ones or larger areas of burn patches if suitable imagery was not available.



Dataset fields:

NAME: Name given to wildfire

SOURCE: One of:

• EFFIS

• NatureScot – manual

• NatureScot – automated

• JHI

DATE: Exact date of fire if known

PREFIREDATE: Date of S2 imagery in comparison (automated detection only)

POSTFIREDATE: Date of S2 imagery in comparison (automated detection only)

MONTHYEAR: Common date field for all burns. Contains date of fire if known otherwise date of postfire image used. Used for slicing/displaying the data.

AREA_HA: Area in hectares

REGION: One of four regions of Scotland to allow analysis.

SEASON: three seasons for analysis: T1 is Jan-Apr, T2 is May-Sep and T3 is Oct-Dec. The year is appended.

This dataset contains a single polygon for the Cairngorms Wildfire in 2026.