Fires in Australia

Fires in Australia

24 December 2006

Fires in Victoria

Fires in Victoria continued to rage on 20 December 2006. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra shows smoke swirling over the state and spreading westward over Melbourne. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are outlined in red. These fires have been burning since the beginning of the month, as dry, hot, windy conditions prevailed across the region. Although this part of Victoria is largely national parks and other natural areas, there are many small towns and communities scattered throughout the region that have been endangered by the fires.

TERRA
20 December  2006

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250meters per pixel.

Despite the fact that summer was not officially underway, the late spring weather was extremely challenging for firefighters: hot, windy, and dry. Rough estimates based on preliminary maps from the government’s Victoria Parks Website indicated that more than 470,000 hectares (close to 1.2 million acres) had burned as of December 15.

ASTER – TERRA
20 December  2006

This image from NASA’s Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the agency’s Terra satellite shows fires burning in the heart of Alpine National Park, roughly 57 kilometers (a little over 35 miles) southeast of the town of Mansfield. The image uses not only visible light detected by ASTER, but also shortwave- and near-infrared light. Vegetation appears red, burned areas appear charcoal, bare ground (including roads) appears light beige, and smoke is gray. Plumes of smoke from individual fires billow southeast (the image is rotated counterclockwise off North) and spread into a blanket of haze.

Alpine is Victoria’s largest national park, covering 646,000 hectares (nearly 1.6 million acres) of the state’s highest mountains. A mixture of alpine and sub-alpine ecosystems exists in the park, including snow gum (a kind of eucalyptus) forest and high plains covered by grasslands. More than 1,000 species of native plants live within the park, as well as threatened and rare animals. Many areas and roads in the park were closed because of the dangerous fire conditions.

(source: EarthObservatory).

See also the latest fire spread prediction map:

The current situation in Australia is covered by a number of detailedreports (see GFMC Media web page):

Further Information on the Fire Situation in Australia:

SA Country Fire Service http://www.cfs.org.au/  Near-Real Time Wildland Fire Monitoring https://gfmc.online/current/au_ciro.htm  Current weather situation, forecasts, fireweather http://www.bom.gov.au/weather/tas/ More Information on Australian Fires IFFN country notes Department of Sustainability and Environment

http://www.nre.vic.gov.au/fires/index.htm

Tasmania Fire Service

http://www.fire.tas.gov.au

Further Information Australian and New Zealand links. Background information Recent Media Highlights on Fire, Policies, and Politics

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