Scores of fires were burning in central South America and were detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite on April 16, 2003. Fires (red dots) are visible is Paraguay (top center) and Argentina (left). Right of center, fires are burning in the peninsula-like Misiones region of Argentina, which harbors some of the last remaining tracts of a unique rainforest ecosystem known as Atlantic Rainforest. The ecosystem, which is different from the Amazon rainforest of the interior portion of the continent, once stretched hundred of miles inland along most of the eastern South American coastline, but it has been almost completely cut down in the centuries since European settlement.
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
