Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) is an international organization with an ambitious, multifaceted strategy integrating space-based and in-situ observations for sustainable management of natural resources. GOFC-GOLD is a panel of GTOS and its overall objective is to improve the quality and availability of earth observation data on forests, land cover and fire at regional and global scales for a wide variety of users. The main themes of GOFC-GOLD are Fire Mapping and Monitoring, and Land Cover Characterization and Change with focus group activities on reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD), biomass and agricultural land use change.GOFC/GOLD is a part of the Global Terrestrial Observing Systems (GTOS), which is sponsored by the International Global Observation System (IGOS) partners, which include the United Nations (UN) Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).  

GOFC-GOLD-Fire Implementation Team (IT) aims to refine and articulate the best possible use of fire products from the existing and future satellite observing systems for fire management, policy decision-making and global change research. Fire observations from MODIS, TRMM, Landsat 7 and ASTER are major NASA contributions to GOFC-GOLD-Fire program. NASA is also supporting a fire capability for NPP VIIRS.  NASA is also implementing the Land Atmosphere Near real time Capability for EOS (LANCE) which provides rapid fire information.  GOFC-GOLD Fire continues to develop new networks and coordinate with several other existing national and regional networks that are key to regional science and the practical applications of the NASA Earth Science Data. The Fire IT is continuing its strategic partnership with international organizations such as the SysTem for Analysis Research and Training (START), the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Global Wildland Fire Network, the European Association of Remote Sensing Laboratories (EARSeL) special interest group (SIG) on fires, the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS), the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites-Land Product Validation Subgroup (CEOS-LPV),  the International Land Direct Readout Coordination Committee (ILDRCC) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).