Fires in Northeast China
Firesin NortheastChina
27 May 2006
Nearly 10,000 fire fighters and forest rangers are fighting against the fires that broke out last Sunday at the Galashan Forest near Heihe and at the Kanduhe Forest located in the highly forested Da Hinggan Ling Range. By Thursday noon, the fire affected area of the Galashan Forest was about 12,000 ha, and 2,000 ha of the Kanduhe Forest was burned. More than 140 residents in Beijiang Town of Huma County and the Galashan farm have been evacuated from the area, but no injuries were reported.
By 8 p.m. Friday, the fire of Huma County has been been brought under control, but the fires at the Kanduhe Forest were still raging. Attempts to make artificial rain were made Friday night to control the forest fires that have raged at the Da Hinggan Ling Range in northeast China for several days. Favorable weather including low temperatures and mild wind made for good conditions for making artificial rain at the fire-hit forest areas. If the artificial rainfall is successful the fire at the Kanduhe Forest is likely to be controlled.
Forest and other wildland fires occur in the area nearly every spring, sometimes started by lightning and sometimes started by people. Fires have been burning off and on throughout May, and on 25 May 2006, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite captured this image of numerous fires (marked in red) billowing thick smoke. The smoke from the fires in China is blowing northeast, while the smoke from several of the fires in Russia blows northwest.
From the same day, a fire occurence map was produced by the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Krasnoyarsk, on the base of satellite data (classification by the NOAA AVHRR).It shows the fire location (by latitude and longitude) and the area affected by fire (red signature, size in ha). The red arrow at each fire location points to the nearest populated place.
25 May 2006
(Image courtesy MODIS)
25 May 2006
(Image courtesy Sukachev Institute of Forest)
These images of the region were captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite during overpasses on the 24, 25, 26 and 27 May 2006 and were selected to show the development of the fire.
TERRA
(Image courtesy MODIS)
24 May 2006
25 May 2006
26 May 2006
27 May 2006
Shortwave- and near-infrared observations from MODIS have been added to these images to make burn scars (magenta) stand out better from vegetation (bright green) and naturally bare or thinly vegetated ground (pale pink or tan). Active fires are marked in red and at the northwestern perimeter of the fire, a small area of bright pink indicates areas that were actively flaming at the time of the overpass.
The high-resolution images provided above have a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel.
Some visual impressions from the fires:
For more details on fire in China´s Northeast:
