Dozens of forest fires were burning across the Central Siberian Plateau in Russia on July 20, 2006. When the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead, the sensor detected fires (marked in red) across a broad region. Thick smoke streams westward from the blazes and eventually wraps around to the south, blanketing the city of Bratsk, which sits beside the Angara River northwest of Lake Baikal.
The boreal forests of North America and Eurasia are prone to fires in the summer. Fires are triggered naturally by the lightning that accompanies summer storms and either accidentally or carelessly by people.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.
