PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA03735: The Biscuit Wildfire
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Terra
 Spacecraft:  Terra
 Instrument:  MISR
 Product Size:  3036 x 2560 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA03735.tif (20.79 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA03735.jpg (983.6 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Ignited by lightning strikes during a record-breaking heat wave, the Biscuit Fire became Oregon's largest wildfire of the past century. Between mid July and early September 2002, it consumed almost 500,000 acres in southern Oregon and northern California. This image pair from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) portrays the fire underway and the burn scars on the landscape after the event. Vegetated regions appear red in these false-color views, which were acquired by MISR's vertical-viewing (nadir) camera. Data from the near-infrared, red and blue bands, are displayed as red, green and blue, respectively. This display technique accentuates the contrast between burnt and unburnt areas.

The left-hand panel captures parts of southern Oregon and northwest California as they appeared on July 29. Smoke plumes emanate from several sections of the Biscuit Fire near the Oregon-California border. Numerous other fires were also burning across Oregon, sending large amounts of smoke seaward over a cloud deck in the Pacific Ocean.

The right-hand panel portrays the same geographic area on October 29, about seven weeks after the fire had been fully contained. A large, dark-colored burn scar at the site of the Biscuit Fire indicates the area consumed, which included almost the entire Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area and parts of the Siskiyou and Six Rivers National Forests. The fight to suppress the Biscuit Fire was the most expensive fire fighting effort in Oregon's history, with more than 6,000 personnel assisting the battle to suppress the fire and protect thousands of threatened homes.

The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer observes the daylit Earth continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82 degrees north and 82 degrees south latitude. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra orbits 13899 and 15297. The panels cover an area of 380 kilometers x 704 kilometers, and utilize data from blocks 56 to 60 within World Reference System-2 path 46.

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology.

For more information: http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov.

Image Credit:
NASA/GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team

Image Addition Date:
2002-11-27