Smoke Over the Amazon in 2005 and 2006

In 2005, at the tail end of a multi-year dry spell, the annual dry season in the Amazon south of the equator ballooned into an unrelenting drought. Agricultural fires, now a fixture on the Amazon frontier from August through mid-October, invaded adjacent forests on a large scale. Thick smoke hung over the forest off and on for months.

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Maps by Robert Simmon, based on MODIS data from Ilan Koren. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.

Published March 12, 2008