After years of drought, Chile has been experiencing major wildfires in the Araucanía Region of Chile. In March 2015, firefighters battled blazes across the entire region, but especially in protected nature reserve areas of China Muerta National Reserve, Reserva Nacional Nalcas, and Conguillio National Park.
Conguillío National Park is located in the Andes, in the provinces of Cautín and Malleco, in the Araucanía Region of Chile also known as Region IX. Its name derives from the Mapuche word for “water with Araucaria seeds.” Conguillio’s main attraction are its volcanoes and monkey puzzle trees. The trees (Araucaria araucana) are a member of the pine family, and can live up to a thousand years. These rampant wildfires are threatening the ongoing existence of these trees in their natural habitat. Since the initial fire outbreak over one million of them have been burned in the most recent fire that spread through Chile’s China Muerta National Park.
It is unclear if the hot spots that are found on this image from the Aqua satellite collected on May 07, 2015 are actual forest fires or agricultural in nature. But each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by plumes of smoke, as in this image, such hot spots are diagnostic for fire. It is also possible that the recent eruption of the Calbuco volcano could have also caused some of the outbreaks.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner