Forest Fire in Southern France. As many as thirty forest fires were started in the last week of July 2003 along Frances Mediterranean Coast. Several tourists were killed and thousands more evacuated by the fires, which appear to have been started by arson, according to news reports. The fires are being helped along by exceptionally dry and sunny weather.
This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite was captured on July 30, 2003. The top scene shows southeastern France in natural color, with the wooded hills along the coast appearing deep green, and active fire detections marked in red. In the bottom image in the pair, the image has been enhanced to show the burned areas, which appear brick red.
Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French as le Midi, is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes: Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Monaco and Andorra are sometimes included in definitions of Southern France although they are principalities
Credit: Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC