Objective  Studying the spatial and temporal dynamics of forest fire is beneficial for understanding the trend of forest fire, and can provide a scientific basis for the division of fire risks and the rational allocation of fire management resources.

  Method  Based on MODIS satellite fire point data, the statistics method, Mann-Kendall trend test and sliding t-test were applied to study the characteristics of spatial and temporal distribution of forest fire, the change of fire trend and fire season in Zhejiang Province from 2001 to 2016.

  Result  (1) On the whole, the forest fire in Zhejiang Province increased during 2001−2016. The forest fire mainly occurred in spring, summer and winter. The number of forest fire in spring and summer had a significant growth; however, the forest fire in autumn and winter increased first and then decreased. The number of forest fire occurred during the traditional fire season was getting fewer, and more forest fire occurred in the summer compared with the past. The traditional fire season (November to the coming April) had changed to January 19 th−September 1st. (2) The forest fire declined spatially from southwestern to northeastern Zhejiang, and Hangzhou, Quzhou, Lishui and Wenzhou were fire prone areas and the fire numbers increased during the fire prevention period, spring and summer.

  Conclusion  Our findings suggest that the publicity and education of fire prevention should be enhanced in the southwestern Zhejing Province and in the spring and summer, and properly adjusting the definition of fire season and allocation of fire management resources will help curb the growth trend of forest fire in Zhejiang Province.