December 11, 2021 - Fires in South Sudan
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Fires in South Sudan
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Many dozens of fires speckled the countryside of South Sudan in
mid-December 2021. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this true-color image
on December 9.
Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the
instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
smoke, such as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning
fire. The fires burn in agricultural land and forest to the east and
west of the Sudd area on the east and west of the White Nile. The Sudd
(or Al-Sudd) is a large area of swampy lowlands that stretches about
200 miles (320 km) wide and 250 miles (400 km) long in central South
Sudan.
Although it’s not possible to know the cause of any fire based on
satellite imagery, given the time of year, location, and large number
of the fires, the fires in this image are mostly likely agricultural.
The use of fire as a land-management tool is part of traditional
practices across the world. Fire can be used to clear old crops to
prepare for the next planting season, renew pasture, return nutrients
to the soil or open new land for use.
While fire is an inexpensive and useful agricultural tool with many
benefits, widespread open burning also has significant negative impacts
on weather, climate, human and animal health, and natural resources.
Slash-and-burn clearing of forests and grasslands is the leading cause
of deforestation. Recent studies have explored the impact of living
down-wind of open agricultural fire on people, including one that found
late-pregnancy smoke exposure decreases birthweight, gestational
length, and in-utero survival. Another paper, published in 2019 by the
National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts,
correlates living downwind of agricultural fires to a decrease in
cognitive performance on standardized tests, when compared to those
living upwind.
Image Facts
Satellite: Terra
Date Acquired: 12/8/2021
Resolutions: 1km (40.7 KB), 500m (132.9 KB), 250m (453.6
KB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC
https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2021-12-11
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