Scores of forest fires were burning in northern Algeria in late August 2007. Although much of the country is occupied by the Sahara Desert, Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and chaparral occur on the Atlas Mountains that line the coast. On August 29, 2007, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of the fires billowing thick clouds of brownish-gray smoke over the Mediterranean Sea. The smoke was so thick that the capital, Algiers, is not visible beneath it.

According to news reports, several people died, dozens of families had to evacuate their homes, and the number of people seeking medical attention for respiratory and allergy problems dramatically increased as a result of the fires. Thousands of soldiers were deployed to help battle the fires. Cooler weather and firefighting efforts brought many fires under control by August 31.

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 western and eastern Algerian coastline in additional resolutions.

NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center.