NASA MODIS Image of the Day: April 17, 2011 – Fires and smoke in southeastern Australia and Tasmania
Fires dotted the landscape of southeastern Australia and Tasmania in early autumn 2011.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite passed over the region on April 8 and captured this true color image at 04:10 UTC on that day.
Most of the fires are clustered in the state of Victoria, which comprises the southern tip of the region. A line of fires in New South Wales, just north of Victoria can be seen aligned in a southwest to northeast direction. A few red hotspots, which indicate an area of increased temperature, can also be seen across Tasmania. The plumes of gray smoke which billow from many of the hotspots indicate that the increased temperature is a result of actively burning fires. Bushfire season in Victoria and the surrounding states occurs from November to April. Fires normally occur when temperatures are high and the relative humidity is low. Hot, windy days with dry air allow small fires, often set deliberately to manage agricultural land, to blow out of control quickly. Because bushfires need vegetation to burn, they occur in areas where there are a lot of dry grasses, trees or scrub. In this image, fires occur primarily in areas that appear very light green or tan, suggesting that most are burning in areas with little growing vegetation, probably in grasslands or agricultural areas after the growing season has ended and the plants have begun to dry as autumn progresses. Southeastern Australia, particularly Victoria, has a history of active bushfire seasons and the fires can be catastrophic. One of the worst in recent history was the “Black Saturday” bushfire that burned on and around Saturday, February 7, 2009. In this fire, 173 people died and 414 were injured.
