The southern Africa burning season is still underway as farmers and ranchers light fires to clear fields for planting and to renew rangeland vegetation. Numerous fires (red dots) were detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite through Angola (top left quadrant) and Zambia (top right quadrant) and tapering off in Namibia (bottom left quadrant) and Botswana (bottom right quadrant). The green broomstick-shaped feature south of image center is the vegetation of the Okavango River Delta. The highly reflective area to its southeast is the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. Another salt flat, called Etosha Pan, is visible south of the Angola-Namibia border. This image was acquired on September 12, 2002.
Image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA-GSFC
