NASA MODIS Image of the Day: February 2, 2012 – Fires in eastern Africa
During the dry season in East Africa, leaves, grasses and cropland turn tinder-crisp, giving a spark from any source, including fires deliberately set for agricultural management, the potential to rapidly flare out of control and grow into a destructive inferno.
On January 31, 2012, about half-way into the dry season, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over East Africa and captured this true-color image.
Large red hotspots are spattered across the region, many trailing long plumes of dark gray smoke. The combination of heat (indicated by hotspots) and smoke is a reliable indicator of fire. Lake Albert runs from northeast to southwest near the center of this image, and Lake Victoria can be seen at the bottom edge. Lake Kyoga branches eastward between them. The Democratic Republic of Congo, in the west, and Uganda share the border that crosses Lake Albert, and most of the fires are found in these two countries. Some fires are also sprinkled across South Sudan, to the north, while to the east Kenya remains nearly fire-free. In this area at this time of year, it is common for MODIS to capture images of the landscape speckled with hotspots, because farmers often use fire to clear forested land, prepare cropland, clean the remains of harvested crops or renew pastureland. This season, however, many wildfires are also being reported, many of which have been highly destructive. On January 29 the Hungarian National Association of Radio Distress-Signaling and Infocommunications (RSOE) Emergency and Disaster Information Service (EDIS) reported more than eleven central forest reserves in Hoima district alone are under threat of deforestation from wild fires. In the Bujaawe Forest Reserve, located near the eastern shore of Lake Albert, over 300 acres had been burned. These trees belonged to private forest developers who had been given leases as long as 49 years to grow trees in the reserve. The value of the destroyed trees was estimated to be 1.5 billion shillings (about 643,000 US dollars). On January 30, another fire blazed through the village of Lomerimong in Nawaikorot Parish, Uganda, leaving families homeless after destroying 32 grass-thatched huts. The destruction of household property was valued in the millions of shillings. That fire was suspected to have been ignited by locals who were burning brush as they hunted for rats. A similar fire occurred the week before in Abim District, where two people were killed as their huts burned.
