Fires in Africa
Fire Season in Central and Southern Africa
28 July 2005
The annual southern Africa burning season is fully underway in late July 2005. Each year, farmers and herders set fire to fields and grasslands to create soil-fertilizing ash, stop woody shrubs from encroaching on grasslands, and stimulate new plant growth.The continent is on fire from coast to coast for several months a year.
AQUA
25 July 2005
11:55 hrs UTC
(Image courtesy MODIS)
True colour: Bands 1-4-3
False Colour: Bands 7-2-1
The links provide a 500mresolution for both scenes
This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite shows the immense spatial scale of the seasonal burning in SouthernAfrica. Thousands of active fires were detected by MODIS across Angola (left), Democratic Republic of Congo(top), and Zambia (right); their locations are marked with red dots. Though these fires are not necessarily immediatelyhazardous, such large-scale burning can have a strong impact on weather, climate, humanhealth, and natural resources.
The left image is a photo-like image in natural colours, while theright image has been enhanced by including MODIS observations of infraredlight. In the false colour scene, vegetation is bright green, clouds are lightblue, the burned area is magenta and water bodies and geographical features canbe seen more clearly.
For further information see also:
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The South African Working on Fire Programme
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IFFN Country Reports on Central African countries
- Recent Africa Updates
