The climate of Mozambique is dominated by a wet (November-April) and dry (May-October) monsoon. Fires increase in number, size, and intensity as the dry season progresses. A small number of fires start naturally, but people start the majority of fires either intentionally for agricultural purposes or accidentally. This Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image of coastal Mozambique on August 16, 2005, shows hundreds of fires (marked in red) that were detected by MODIS as it passed overhead. Though intentional agricultural fires are not necessarily immediately hazardous, they can have strong negative impacts on human health and natural resources.
The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides this image at additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center
