In the third week of July 2004, several fires sprang up at the urban-wildland interface around Los Angeles, California. The Pine, Fooothill, and Crown fires all flared up suddenly and quickly grew to several thousand acres. This image of the area burned by the Foothill Fire shows how close the fire burned to populated and developed areas in the northern suburbs of L.A. The burned area appears as a charcoal-blue patch in image center, contrasting sharply with the forested slopes (vegetation is red in this false-color image) of the surrounding mountains. Developed areas appear light red or light blue. This image was captured on July 20, 2004, by the MODIS-ASTER Airborne Simulator, which flies on NASA’s ER-2 aircraft. MASTER bands 5, 4, and 1 appear as red, green, and blue in the image.
Image by Jesse Allen, based on data from the MASTER Team.
