In northwestern Spain and Portugal dozens of fires were racing through dry forests in early August 2006. This image of the area was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on August 9, 2006. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are marked in red. Thick smoke spreads out in a gray-brown plume to the west. Windy, dry weather was making the fires difficult to contain. According to news reports, many of the fires in Spain appear to have been set by arsonists.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides twice-daily images at additional resolutions.
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NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
