Fires and smoke across Mozambique

Smoke from hundreds of fires (marked with red dots) hangs over Malawi (top center), Mozambique (center), and Zimbabwe (left) in southern Africa. Fire.both naturally occurring and human-made.has been part of the landscape in southern Africa for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Despite its necessity and usefulness as an agricultural tool, there is some concern among scientists that as human populations continue to expand and the need for agricultural land grows, too much fire may begin to damage the land, increase greenhouse gases, and harm human health. The flip side of that story is that there are also places where fire suppression is altering the natural vegetation of the savanna landscape, which is home to grasses and shrubs that have evolved with fire over hundreds of thousands of years.

This image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite on October 3, 2003.

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Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC

Published October 3, 2003
Data acquired October 3 - 3, 2003

Source:

Aqua > MODIS

Topic:

Human Dimensions > Natural Hazards > Fires