A handful of fires in the Bío-Bío region of Chile were detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on January 13, 2007. The largest of the fires (outlined in red) are near the coast, south of the Itata River. These large fires are about 10 kilometers northeast of the cities of Concepción and Talcahuano, which are veiled by a smoke from the south. At the time of this posting, the cause of the fires was not known. The smaller fires in the area around Los Angeles could be agricultural fires, but the larger, smoky fires are more likely to be natural or human-caused forest fires.
The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image at additional resolutions.
References & Resources
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
