After dry weather parched the soil and vegetation, large fires burned in the northwestern Venezuela state.
For much of March and April 2020, satellites have detected signatures of heat and smoke from fires burning in northwestern Venezuela. Some of them burned in and near Ciénagas del Catatumbo National Park, a flat swampy area west of Lake Maracaibo known for its rainforests full of unusual plant and animal life.
Throughout March, satellites detected short-lived fires in the northwestern state of Zulia—likely crop or other small-scale fires. But in mid-March a larger, smokier, and more sustained fire cluster emerged in the park in a forested area west of the lake. On March 27, 2020, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired an image (above) of a sizable smoke plume over the park. Places where the sensor detected unusually warm temperatures—signs of fires—are shown with red. As seen in the image below, the fire was still smoldering in late-April.
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Image via NASA Earth Observatory
