Fighting Fire With Fire

Several gray smoke plumes are visible drifting over a green landscape.

Smoke streams from fires in Australia’s Northern Territory in an image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 28, 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

In May and June of most years, NASA satellites typically begin to detect large numbers of wildland fires throughout the Top End and Arnhem Land regions of Australia’s Northern Territory. On some days, especially in the afternoon, the blazes can resemble sizable wildfires in satellite imagery, spreading widely and producing expansive smoke plumes.

That was the case when NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired this image of smoke and fires on the afternoon of May 28, 2026. Often, however, fires burning in this area look smaller and less imposing. In the mornings just a few days earlier and later, for instance, NASA satellites detected little smoke despite observing many thermal anomalies, or hotspots, that indicated fire activity.

The pattern of burning, location, and timing are consistent with prescribed fires lit intentionally to manage the landscape. Land managers tend to light fires in the morning, and smoke builds over the course of the day. The process sometimes creates sizable plumes when there are updrafts and winds of moderate strength that carry smoke away from the fires, as happened on May 28 and again on June 2. The fires typically burn through the fire-adapted grasses, underbrush, and scattered trees in the region’s tropical savanna ecosystems.

Over the past few decades, the region’s land managers have combined deep-rooted Indigenous land management practices and modern technologies to establish large-scale landscape management programs such as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement project and Arnhem Land Fire Abatement. The goal of such efforts is to intentionally burn some of the savanna underbrush to create firebreaks and reduce fuel loads early in the dry season, reducing more destructive and emissions-intensive fires later in the season. The dry season generally begins in May and extends through September, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

While research is ongoing, there are signs that the prescribed burning efforts are having the intended effect. Analysis of satellite observations of the fires suggests that prescribed burning efforts have shifted fire activity from late to early in the dry season, leading to a reduction in high-intensity fires and emissions.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.