More than 2 million acres were consumed by hundreds of fires between
December 2002 and February 2003 in southeastern Australia's national
parks, forests, foothills and city suburbs. These images were acquired
on February 14, 2002 (left) and February 17, 2003 (right) by the
Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument onboard NASA's
Terra satellite. The year 2002 was one of Australia's hottest and
driest on record, and the acreage burnt during the summer 2002-2003
fire season in Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and southern
New South Wales, is the largest since 1938-1939, when more than 3
million acres were scorched.
The extent of the burnt area and the dry conditions as of February 2003
are indicated by these contrasting false-color views. Both image panels
display data from the near-infrared, red and blue spectral bands of
MISR's downward-viewing (nadir) camera, as red, green and blue,
respectively. This display technique causes healthy vegetation to
appear red and burnt areas to show as dark brown. The data displayed
from the two dates were processed identically to preserve relative
brightness variations. Vegetation changes related to the dry conditions
(not related to the brown burn scars) are also indicated in the
February 2003 panel, where many previously red areas exhibit instead
the pale yellow-brown of the underlying soils and geology. Significant
reduction in the surface area of several large and important water
bodies are also apparent. The diminished extent of Lake Hume (along the
left-hand edge) in the later date provides a good example.
The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth
continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees
north and 82 degrees south latitude. These data products were generated
from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbits 14999 and
16858. The panels cover an area of about 208 kilometers x 286
kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 118 to 121 within World
Reference System-2 path 91.
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team.
Text acknowledgment: Clare Averill (Acro Service Corporation/Jet Propulsion Laboratory).
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