August 22, 2022 - Fires in Queensland

Fires in Queensland, Great Barrier Reef
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On August 17, 2022, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer
(MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of
fires scattered across Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia.

Each red “hot spot” marks an area where the thermal bands on the MODIS
instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical
smoke, as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning fire.
Most of the gray plumes of smoke blow towards the northwest, carried by
strong winds.

Although it’s not possible to discern how a fire started from satellite
imagery, given the time of year most of the fires in this image are
likely prescribed burns—fires deliberately set to manage wildlands.
Some may also be agricultural fires, which have been ignited to manage
pasture or prepare cropland for planting. The Queensland Fire and
Emergency Services report no current bushfires in the region, although
they give advice on several prescribed burns. The Queensland Department
of Environment and Science, Parks and forests, also reports several
prescribed burns, either ongoing or planned.

Fire has been used by Indigenous Australians as a traditional a part of
maintaining a healthy savanna. In northern Australia, traditional
burning starts in April, just before the end of the wet season, and
lasts into September. At the end of the dry season (October-November),
vegetation has browned and dried out, creating significant risk for
severe bushfire. The early burning on Indigenous lands, which is
relatively low temperature and well-controlled, helps reduce fuel load
and minimizes the likelihood of a dangerous conflagration later in the
season. Over the last few decades, the Australian government has also
embraced early dry-season prescribed burns as an effective way to
manage wildlands and prevent devastating bushfires. The success in this
fire-management program points to the importance of working with First
Nations people to use and preserve their knowledge for future
generations.

One very large fire, accompanied by a massive fire scar, can be seen
burning in the west of Cape York Peninsula. The burn scar (area singed
by fire) appears dark brown and is ringed by hot spots, especially in
the west, nearest the Gulf of Carpentaria. This fire appears to be on
First Nation land, in savanna grassland located between Staaten River
National Park in the east and Rutland Plains Nature Refuge in the
northwest. It began on August 13 on the eastern side and has moved to
the west and north. On August 20 the fire was nearly extinguished,
except for a small area in the northwest. At that time, the burn scar
covered about 3,000 square kilometers (1,158 square miles) and had
neat, straight lines at the edges. Both the location and the straight
edges strongly suggest this is a well-managed prescribed burn.

Image Facts
Satellite: Aqua
Date Acquired: 8/17/2022
Resolutions: 1km (87.1 KB), 500m (315.5 KB), 250m (1 MB)
Bands Used: 1,4,3
Image Credit: MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC



https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2022-08-22

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