Suggested Searches

1 min read

Fires in Central and Southern India

Fires in Southern India
Agricultural fires cross the whole of India in this image captured on March 2, 2018.

Vegetation fires in India are commonplace. Farmers use the method of “slash and burn” agriculture (setting fires) to rid the overgrown fields of grass and detritus from the last growing season in order to ready the land for a new growing season. This is a practice that has been going on for centuries in this part of the world. The area uses this type of field clearing starting in October and going through June with the peak coming in March. The Suomi NPP satellite captured this natural-color image using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument onboard of the fires across India on March 02, 2018.

Actively burning areas, detected by VIIRS, are outlined in red. NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team, GSFC. Caption by Lynn Jenner

Suomi NPP is managed by NASA and NOAA.