Thousands of fires burn across east-central Africa on July 8, 2003. Detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite, the fires are spread over thousands of square kilometers in Angola (bottom left), Zambia (bottom center), Democratic Republic of Congo (most of the left half of the image), and Tanzania (most of the right half). In the top right corner is Lake Victoria, and to its southwest is Lake Tanganyika. Fires are a commonly used agricultural tool in Africa, as farmers and ranchers clear farmland and renew pasture.
The high-resolution image provided above is 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at MODIS? maximum spatial resolution of 250 meters.
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Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
