Fires and Burn Scars in Kazakhstan

Thess true- and false-color images of Kazakhstan reveal scattered fires (red dots) burning over an already widely burned landscape. Also Fires, probably agricultural in nature, have burned in the region on and off all summer long, and have left their dark marks all across the landscape.
There are different kinds of burn scars visible.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of small squares and rectangles create a speckled pattern over the tan-colored landscape, especially prominent in the upper-left quadrant of the image. These small burns are best viewed in the high-resolution image.

The regular, geometric shape of these burn scars is a sure sign that they are human-caused. Also are probably the result of numerous small farmers using fire to clear. Therefore the land for farming or to regenerate pasture for grazing animals. Other larger, more irregular burn scars are visible control.

In areas of already low vegetation. (this region receives less than 14 inches of rainfall a year)  And it can sometimes be hard to distinguish burned areas from naturally bare soil or low vegetation. In these cases, false-color image analysis can be useful. In the false-color images, naturally bare soil is pinkish, vegetation is green, burned areas are deep reddish brown, and water is dark blue or black.
These images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Aqua satellite on October 22, 2002.

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