Suggested Searches

1 min read

Fires in the Southern United States

Instruments:
Topics:
2005-10-18 00:00:00
October 18, 2005

In the Mississippi River floodplain and in states across the South, many fires were burning on October 18, 2005, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the region and collected this image. Fires that MODIS detected are marked with red dots, and many have small plumes of smoke. According to reports from the Southern Area Coordination Center for October 19, many types of fires were occurring across the region—some caused by lightning, some caused accidentally by people, and others started by land management officials as prescribed, or planned, burns to manage natural resources.

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image at additional resolutions.

References & Resources

NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

You may also be interested in:

Stay up-to-date with the latest content from NASA as we explore the universe and discover more about our home planet.

Fighting Fire With Fire
3 min read

In fire-prone ecosystems in Australia's Northern Territory, prescribed burns are lit to minimize the severity of fires later in the…

Article
Ontario Wildfire Smoke Moves East
3 min read

Canadian wildfires sent plumes of smoke streaming over Ontario, Quebec, and parts of the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.

Article
Smoke Blankets Oregon
3 min read

Lightning storms have ignited dozens of fires in central and eastern Oregon.

Article