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Northern Africa Fire Season: Natural Hazards

In northern Africa south of the Sahara Desert, the agricultural fire season was clearly underway when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer modis.gsfc.nasa.gov (MODIS) on NASA's aqua.nasa.gov Aqua satellite passed overhead on December 4, 2006, and captured this image. Places where MODIS detected actively burning fires are marked with red dots. Hundreds of fires are scattered across Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic. People in Africa have been using fire to manage agricultural lands for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, and while the fires may not be immediate…