Fires in Mexico’s Sierra Madre del Sur

Scores of fires were burning in the mountain chains lining Mexico’s Pacific Coast on May 17, 2005. This image shows fires (marked in red) detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite in the southern coastal part of the state of Guerrero. The lush green forests of the Sierra Madre del Sur are partially hidden by smoke. The high-altitude cloud forests and other forest ecosystems in this area are some of Mexico’s last remaining large tracts of relatively undisturbed forest. This image has been cropped out of a much larger scene, which shows fires burning up and down the Pacific Coast of Mexico for hundreds of kilometers.

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Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC

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May 17, 2005

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