According to the calendar, fall is still two weeks away, but in Alaska, the seasons have already begun to change. This image of central Alaska where the Tanana River (bottom) joins the Yukon River (top) shows that some of summer’s green has become autumn’s gold and brown. Large, charcoal-colored burn scars are scattered across the region, and numerous fires (marked in red) were still burning when this image was captured on September 6, 2004, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Some of these fires have been burning for months, triggered during a week of intense lightning activity in mid-June.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center
