Fires Across Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Thousands of fires are burning across central and southern Africa in mid-June 2003. Also many Fires Across Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. and have been detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite. Active fire locations have been marked with red dots in this smoky image from June 16, 2003. The image spans Democratic Republic of Congo (top), and parts of Angola (left) and Zambia (bottom right).

There is an especially smoky concentration of fires left of center at the top of the image. Therefore which is the southern Bandundu region of Democratic Republic of Congo. At bottom, the dark green area crisscrossed by dozens of tan lines is the deeply carved Angola Plateau. Also which drops off to the Liuwa Plain in Zambia, through which runs the ZambCentred on the Congo Basin, the territory of the DRC was first inhabited by Central African foragers around 90,000 years ago and was reached by the Bantu expansion about 3,000 years ago. In the west, the Kingdom of Kongo ruled around the mouth of the Congo River from the 14th to 19th centuries. In the centre and east, the kingdoms of Luba and Lunda ruled from the 16th and 17th centuries to the 19th century. ezi River.

Credit: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC