File:Fires in South Sudan (MODIS 2018-12-21).jpg

English: Hundreds of fires burned across South Sudan in mid-December 2018. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the region on December 17.

South Sudan sits in East-Central Africa, south of Sudan, north of Uganda and Kenya and west of Ethiopia. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the livelihoods and food security of up to 90 percent of the population in South Sudan depend on farming, fishing or raising livestock. Food insecurity in the agrarian society remains at extremely high levels, with more than half of South Sudan’s population classified as severely food insecure.

Traditionally the “hungry season” in this region ends with September’s harvest, followed closely by field clearing, soil preparation, pasture renewal, and planting the next season’s crops. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants or old crop residue.

The location, widespread nature, number of fires, and time of year suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality. Each hot spot, which appears as a red mark, is an area where the thermal detectors on the MODIS instrument recognized temperatures higher than background. When accompanied by typical smoke, hot spots are diagnostic for fire.