Between the Brooks Range and the Alaska Range Mountains, along the path of the Yukon River, dozens of fires were burning on August 10, 2005, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured this image.
This infrared-enhanced image makes burned areas (deep reddish brown) stand out from healthy vegetation (bright green) and water (dark blue). Snow on the mountains is bright blue. Notice that the vegetation on the high elevations of both mountain ranges is so sparse that some areas appear similar to the burned areas. The Alaska Interagency Fire Service report from August 10 stated that 571 fires had burned an estimated 2.4 million acres in the 2005 fire season to date.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image and a photo-like image at additional resolutions.
References & Resources
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC
