Before European colonization of North
America’s Great Plains, spring and summer fires, triggered both by
lightning and by Native Americans who used the fires to drive game,
would race across the prairies, suppressing invasion from woody
plants and hastening the germination of new grass seeds.
Today, the springtime fires in places such as Kansas are mostly
agricultural fires. Farmers and ranchers use fire to clear last
year's stubble. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 14,
2005, shows dozens of fires (marked in red) burning in eastern
Kansas.
Satellite
image courtesy: NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth
Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.
