Wildfires in Montana and Wyoming

Wildfires in Montana and Wyoming

Fires have been racing through sagebrush, timber, and grasslands in Montana throughout mid-July 2006. On July 18, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of fires along Fort Peck Lake in northern Montana. Places where the sensor detected actively burning fire are outlined in red. Burned areas appear dark brown. The Soda Creek Fire was about 23,000 acres and 5 percent contained as of July 19, and the Black Pulaski Complex of fires totaled about 52,000 acres and was about 20 percent contained.

The high-resolution image provided above has a spatial resolution of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides daily images of the area in a variety of resolutions and formats. More information on these and other fires in the United States is available at the Website of the National Interagency Fire Center.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.