Scores of fires were burning across the West Siberian Plain in central Russia on May 10, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image. Fire locations are outlined in red. The lake-dotted, steppe landscape near the city of Omsk, along the Irtysh River, is a major wheat-growing area in Russia, and most of the fires have probably been set by people for clearing farmland or pasture. The extreme smokiness of a few of the fires in the north-central part of the image may indicate that they have escaped from their intended location and are burning into surrounding grassland or other natural vegetation.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
