File:Fires in Brazil (MODIS 2019-09-03).jpg

English: Fires continued to burn in the Amazon forest of Brazil through August 2019. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of hundreds of fires burning in the and on the edge of the dark green forests on August 29, the day after the Brazilian President Jair Bolsoaro signed a decree banning the use of fire to clear land in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest for 60 days. Each red hot spot marks an area where the thermal detector on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures. When combined with typical smoke, as in this image, such hot spots mark actively burning fire. Heavy smoke hangs over the entire region and in some places it is so thick that the land beneath the smoke cannot be visualized. Most of the hotspots are located at the edge or within the dark green of the forest, strongly suggesting the fires have been deliberately set to clear the forest, most likely to use the land for use in agricultural or other endeavors.