On the afternoon of April 13, 2006, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite detected two smoky fires burning in northwestern Arkansas’ Boston Mountains when the sensor passed over head and collected this image. The actively burning part of the fire detected by MODIS is outlined in red. Both fires have large plumes of smoke drifting northward. The Arkansas River runs through the image’s bottom left corner, while at top, Beaver Lake sits just south of the Missouri state line. The topography of the area is highlighted by the still-dormant vegetation of the higher elevations of the mountains, which appears brown.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides daily images of this area at additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
