A Fire Cloud in Argentina

Roughly 12,000 wildfires burn each year in Argentina, charring more than 1.3 million hectares (5,000 square miles) of forest and grasslands. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of one of them on January 29, 2018. The fire was burning in La Pampa Province, in an area where cattle graze among the espinal, a dry forest of thorny shrubs and small trees. The cause of the fire was not clear, but ranchers routinely light fires in this region to improve the quality of forage.