On July 16, 2007, lightning ignited a fire on Alaska’s North Slope. Since then, the landscape changed from summer green to autumn brown, but the fire was still burning on September 25, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured this image. Over the roughly two-month period, the fire burned about 222,500 acres. Places where MODIS detected active fire on this day are outlined in red. The burned area makes a dark brown, nearly rectangular scar between the Nanushuk and Itkillik Rivers. These rivers flow north and join the Colville River before emptying into the Arctic Ocean via Harrison Bay.

The large image provided above has a spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response Team provides twice-daily images of the region in additional resolutions

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

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