Fires North of Russia's Lake Baikal

  • Credit

    Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory

North of Lake Baikal in south-central Russia, scores of fires were burning in the region’s forests on July 10, 2006. This image of the Irkutsk region was captured by the MODIS on the Aqua satellite - places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are marked in red. A bank of clouds hugs the left margin of the image, and gray smoke hangs over much of the scene.

Lake Baikal, which is at the bottom right of the image, is the largest (by volume) freshwater lake on Earth, as well as the deepest and oldest. It contains over 20% of the world's liquid fresh water and more than 90% of Russia's liquid fresh water. It lies in Southern Siberia in Russia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and Buryatia to the southeast, near the city of Irkutsk.

Metadata

  • Sensor

    Aqua/MODIS

  • MODIS Bands

    1,4,3

  • Display Date

    July 12, 2006