Fires in Russia and China near the Amur River

In northeastern Asia, the Amur River (called the Heliong Jiang in Chinese) separates Russia and China. Forest and other wildfires occur in the area nearly every spring, sometimes started by lightning and sometimes started by people, and 2006 was no exception. Fires have been burning off and on throughout May, and on May 24, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of numerous fires (marked in red) billowing thick smoke. The smoke from the fire in China is blowing northeast, while the smoke from several of the fires in Russia blows northwest.

References & Resources

NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Earth Sciences DAAC.

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May 24, 2006

JPEG (1.60 MB)