Several large fires were burning on the Central Siberian Plateau, to the west of the Lena River, on July 12, 2005. This image of the region was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite, and places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are marked with red dots. Plumes of thick smoke blow southward from the blazes. According to reports from the ITAR-TASS News Agency on July 15, 2005, about 6,300 hectares (15,568 acres) of forest in Russia’s Far East had been consumed by fires in the previous 24 hours.
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.
