Fires in Northern Australia

Several large fires and many scattered smaller ones were burning in Northern Territory, Australia, on October 11, 2004. This image of the fires (actively burning areas marked in red) shows the area imaged by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Large-scale fires (dark brown terrain shows what has burned) are not uncommon for the tropical savannas and woodlands of northern Australia for this time of year, at the transition from dry to wet season. Sometimes the fires occur naturally through lightning strikes, and sometimes they are intentional, land management burns.

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NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.

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October 11, 2004

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