Smoke and Fire on Bathurst Island

Smoke and Fire on Bathurst Island

Fire is commonly used as tool for land management and hunting by people living on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia. Roughly one-third of the savanna woodlands on these islands burn each year.

On June 19, 2017, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of smoke streaming from a large cluster of fires on Bathurst Island. Red outlines indicate areas with heat signatures indicative of active burning.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Adam Voiland.

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