North Australia has the largest and most frequent fires on the whole continent. Grasslands and tropical savannas dominate the region, flourishing during the rainy season and drying to tinderbox conditions after the rains pass. By some estimates, as much as half of the area covered by savanna woodlands, such as the Cape York Peninsula (shown at right), burns every one to two years.
The most devastating fires usually occur late in the dry season, which runs from May until October. In this true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from October 7, 2002, numerous large fires (red dots) dot the buff-colored landscape. The southernmost fire on the Cape is very large. In the high-resolution image you can more clearly see a large, dark burn scar surrounded by a perimeter of active fire detections.
Image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA-GSFC
