July 22, 2003
The solid green expanse of the Amazon Rainforest is increasingly broken by roads and tracts of farmland. This image of Mato Grosso state in southern Brazil shows numerous fires (red dots) detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) around the Xingu National Park and Indigenous Peoples Preserve, which hangs like a pendulum down from intact forest to the north.
The high-resolution image provided above is 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution of 250 meters.
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Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC
