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For the past two months, wildfires and agricultural fires have littered the Indochina landscape, periodically filling the skies with a thick, grayish layer of smoke. This image was acquired on April 5, 2002, by the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiomter (MODIS), flying aboard NASA’s Terra satellite. Each of the red dots on the image represents an individual fire. As one can see, most are clustered around southern Cambodia, northern Thailand, and northern Laos—all areas that have undergone severe deforestation in recent years.

(Please note that the high-resolution scene provided here is 500 meters per pixel. For a copy of this scene at the sensor’s full resolution, visit the MODIS land rapid response system site.)

Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC