Tundra Fires – Now Online
Smoke from intense fires in southeastern Russia poured over the Sea of Okhotsk on June 30, 2008. This natural-color image of the fires (marked in red) is made from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites on June 30. The fires are affecting Amur, Khabarovsk, and southern Sakha Provinces in Russia’s Far East.
NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
Fire data is now avaialble on the web, continuously updated, in a beta web tool developed in the University of Maryland, in cooperation with NASA.
During the EALAT Information workshops in Sakha and Chukotka, loss of reindeer pastures as a result of fires was highlighted by reindeer herders as a threat to reindeer husbandry. During Soviet times, considerable resources were expended on fire control and fighting from the air. With the economic crisis of the 1990′s, these efforts were halted and have yet to be resumed. The New Scientist recently carried an article that suggests that tundra fires will increase in size and intensity with climate change.
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