Scores of fires (locations marked in red) were burning in Mexico and northern Central America on May 11, 2008, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Fires are widely scattered across the Yucatan Peninsula to the west of a bank of clouds. Farther south, a large patch of dense forest spans the Mexico-Guatemala border. Fires cluster around the southern perimeter of the forest patch. The fires in the mountains of central Guatemala are especially smoky.
The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions.
NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
