Smoke over Western Russia
Hundreds of fires burned across western Russia on August 2, 2010, but it is the smoke that conveys the magnitude of the disaster in this true-color image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Dense gray-brown smoke extends across the width of this image, a distance of about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles). The smoke clearly continues both east and west beyond the edge of the image, and is visible in both previous and successive orbits of the Terra satellite. The smoke is so thick that it is not possible to see the ground beneath it.
The fires ignited in late July and early August as record heat combined with drought turned plants tinder dry. Nearly 700 fires burned on August 2, reported CNN, burning homes, killing at least 34 people, and pushing about 500 towns and villages into a state of emergency. The western half of the impacted region is shown in this image. One of the worst hit communities, Nizhny Novgorod, is beneath the dense smoke on the left side of the image. The city’s approximate location is marked.
Many of the fires burned in peat bogs, producing the thick smoke shown in the image. Because of the smoke, the air quality was poor from Moscow (west of the area shown in the image) to east of the Ural Mountains. MODIS detected some of the fires along the edge of the smoke. These fires are outlined in red and visible in the large image. Additional fires in the forests of eastern Siberia pumped dense smoke over eastern Russia.
The large image is the highest-resolution version of the image, but the image is available in additional resolutions from the MODIS Rapid Response Team.
References
- BBC News. (2010, August 2). Russia declares state of emergency over wildfires. Accessed August 2, 2010.
- Chance, M and Tkachenko, M. (2010, August 2). Wildfires force state of emergency for 500 Russian towns. CNN. Accessed August 2, 2010.
NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
- Instrument:
- Terra - MODIS
- Flooding in Pakistan
Widespread, heavy monsoon rains fell in Pakistan in late July 2010, leading to at least 90 deaths, according to news reports. The worst flooding in a century struck northwestern Pakistan, displacing several thousand residents.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured these images on July 30, 2010 (top), and June 5, 2010 (bottom). The images show the lower Indus River, not far from Pakistan’s coast. Both images use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase the contrast between water and land. Water appears in varying shades of blue, vegetation is green, and bare ground is pinkish brown. Clouds are bright turquoise.
Compared to the image from earlier in the month, the image from July 30 shows significantly higher water levels along the Indus River, in addition to increased vegetation throughout the region’s river valleys. The Jhelum, Chenab, and Sutlej Rivers, as well as a number of smaller tributaries, feed into the Indus, and higher water levels are also apparent along those river channels. The city of Jacobabad appears inundated on July 30, and the patch of electric blue northwest of the city also suggests flooding.
According to ReliefWeb, the area in Pakistan hardest hit by flooding lies in the northwestern part of the country, almost directly north of where the Indus River curves to the west.
References
- ACT Alliance. (2010, July 29). Thousands stranded by Pakistan floods. ReliefWeb. Accessed July 30, 2010.
- Voice of America News. (2010, July 29). Floods kill 90 in NW Pakistan. Accessed July 30, 2010.
NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.
- Instrument:
- Terra - MODIS
Oil Slick. Mississippi River Delta.
Gulf of Mexico
The International Space Station (ISS) observed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in late July 2010, as part of ongoing observations of the region. When this image was taken, three months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the leak had been plugged for eight days. Water surfaces appear bright and land surfaces appear dark in the image. The stark contrast is due to sunglint, in which the Sun is reflected off water surfaces back towards the astronaut observer on board the ISS. The sunglint reveals various features in the Gulf of Mexico, especially sheens of oil that appear as packets of long bright streaks (image right). Sediments carried by the Mississippi River have a pale beige coloration in this image, with distinct margins between plumes that likely mark tidal pulses of river water into the Gulf of Mexico. A boat wake cuts across one of the oil packets at image top right.
The bright waterways known as the South and Southwest Passes of the tip of the Mississippi River Delta (image center left and lower left) provide passage for ships into the Gulf of Mexico. The section of South Pass shown in the image is 8 miles (13 km) long. This gives a sense of the proximity of the ruined Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which is located only 50 miles (80 km) to the southeast of the imaged area (not shown.) Daily maps of oil distribution produced by NOAA show predicted heavier and lighter oil movement near the Gulf coastline. The map from July 22, 2010, (PDF file) shows that on the day this image was taken from the ISS (July 23, 2010), the north edge of the “oiled” zone was expected to bank up against the Delta. The observed spread of the surface oil in the approximately 100 days since the explosion highlights the connectivity between the deep-water areas and coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico.
To learn more about oil slick images shown on the Earth Observatory, including why the oil isn’s visible every day, please visit Gulf of Mexico Oil Slick Images: Frequently Asked Questions.
More images of this event in Natural Hazards
Astronaut photograph ISS024-E-9404 July 23, 2010, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera using a 400 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 24 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, NASA-JSC.
- Instrument:
- ISS - Digital Camera
Kaziranga National Park. India
In the state of Assam, in the northeastern corner of India, Kaziranga National Park protects a few hundred square miles of the Brahmaputra River’s natural floodplain. In the fertile soil washed down from the Himalaya Mountains during the yearly floods, lush grasses grow up to 20 feet high, making the park a paradise for grazing animals and their predators.
This natural-color image from the Landsat satellite shows Kaziranga National Park on February 5, 2000. The river flows west through braided channels interspersed with sandy islands. The grassy expanse of the park to the south is dotted with pools of water.
The hilly terrain on both sides of the river plays an important role in making the park a wildlife haven. When snowmelt and summer monsoon rains flood the lowlands, the residents—which include endangered rhinos, elephants, wild water buffalos, and tigers—migrate from the river corridor to higher ground. Small reserves and sanctuaries protect some of the forested hills south of Kaziranga, but villages and fields are mixed among them, which means that human-wildlife conflicts are inevitable.
References
- Chadwick, D. (2010, August). India’s Grassland Kingdom. National Geographic, 218(2), 98-117.
NASA image by Robert Simmon, based on Landsat-7 data from the USGS Global Visualization Viewer, and the World Database on Protected Areas. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey.
- Instrument:
- Landsat 7 - ETM+
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Mis blogs son una casa abierta a todas las culturas, religiones y países. Se un seguidor si quieres, con esta acción usted está construyendo una nueva cultura de la tolerancia, la mente y el corazón abiertos para la paz, el amor y el respeto humano.
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03-08-10
Smoke over Western Russia
Flooding in Pakistan
Oil Slick. Mississippi River Delta. Gulf of Mexico
Kaziranga National Park. India
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