NASA MODIS Image of the Day: March 8, 2012 – Fires in central and southern India
In late February, 2012 hundreds of fires burned across India, streaming blue-gray plumes of smoke across the region.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) captured this true-color image on February 27, 2012.
A large number of fires are clustered in Andhra Pradesh. On February 24, just days before this image was captured, it was reported that the Forest Survey of India (FSI) stated that the area had 506 forest fires since the first of the year, which is almost five times more than any other state in India. On one day alone (February 20) there were 169 fires reportedly burning across Andhra Pradesh. Further south, additional small clusters of fires can be seen burning in the forested regions. The Nagarhole tiger reserve in Karnataka, in southwestern India, was among those blazes. Over 3,000 acres of that forest has been decimated in the past week, according to IBNlive India. The cause of that blaze, as most of those seen in this image, is suspected to be from human activity.
