Fires and Thick Smoke over South America

Fires and Thick Smoke over South America

5 September 2007

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Scores of fires filled the South American skies with smoke in early September 2007. This image of the heart of the continent was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on 2 September 2007. Places where MODIS detected active fires are marked in red.

AQUA
2 September 2007

The densest concentration of fires is in southeastern Bolivia, near the border withBrazil. This area (the Santa Cruz Department) is a zone of transition in the vegetation type from thewetter, more luxuriant forests in the Amazon River basin (green vegetation in top part of image) to drier woodlands and savannas farther south(browner vegetation in lower part of image). The Andes Mountains keep the smoke concentrated over the eastern part of the image.

The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters perpixel.

(source: EarthObservatory)

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