File:Agricultural Burning in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (MODIS 2019-04-11).jpg

English: On April 7, 2019, NASA’s Terra satellite flew over Bolivia, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of fires burning in Santa Cruz Department.

Tucked in the Andes Mountains, the countryside east of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra has been called the “promised land” of Bolivian agriculture, with rich, fertile soils. The department of Santa Cruz represents about 60 percent of the country’s agricultural yields, and the heart of the fertility sits in this location. The rectangular-shaped plots, colored primarily in tan and light green, are agricultural fields. The city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra can be seen in the west, marked in gray and tan pixels. The city sits on the Piray River while the larger, muddy, Rio Grande (Rio Guapay) curls through agricultural land east of the city. In the south, the large area of unbroken green is the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park, the largest national park in Bolivia and one of the largest in South America.

Several large red hot spots can be seen in the far eastern section of the image. Each red hot spot marks an area where the thermal bands on the instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical smoke, as in this image, they mark actively-burning fires. The fires are located at the edge of fields and in forest. The location, time of year, and number of fires mark these as agricultural fires—fires deliberately set to manage crops or pastureland. Fire is also used to open forest for use as cropland, a destructive tactic called “slash and burn” agriculture.