People in Madagascar seasonally burn the grasslands and savanna-type vegetation of interior Madagascar as part of their agricultural land management practices. Over two millennia of habitation, human exploitation of the island’s natural resources, including the imposed fire regime, has transformed the plant and animal communities of Madagascar. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on August 6, 2005, shows scores of fires (red dots) scattered across the island. The high-resolution image provided above is 500 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
