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 September 2, 2007. Places where MODIS detected active fires are marked in red. The densest concentration of fires is in southeastern Bolivia, near the border with Brazil. This area (the Santa Cruz Department) is a zone of transition in the vegetation type from the wetter, 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 per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions.
References & Resources
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
