![]() Note the size of many of the burn scars in this area. The burn scar is located about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Lake Mackay ( -23.284888 South, 127.859769 East.) The lower image shows a broader view. Imagery collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites indicate that a thunderstorm on November 7 triggered the fire. The gray area south of Kiwirrkurra is a range of stony hills. The vegetation on the unburned parts of the landscape is primarily the desert grass Triodia (see photo below). ![]() The burn scar is light orange compared to the darker orange areas that have not burned recently. On November 19, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 satellite acquired the image at the top of the page-a burn scar in the Gibson Desert. Pintupi hunters also used fires to drive game animals from their burrows, and hunting in a recently burned area made game easier to track. The Pintupi used to light fires to encourage the growth of certain edible plants that were only abundant in years after a fire. By comparing aerial imagery from the 1950s with a series of more recent images collected by Landsat satellites, an ecologist with Western Australia’s forest department Neil Burrows found that fire scars around Lake Mackay grew much larger after the Pintupi were resettled. That nomadic lifestyle was transformed when the British military began missile tests in the region in 1950s most of the Pintupi people living in the area ended up in small settlements such as Kiwirrkurra.Ī change in the lifestyle of the Pintupi resulted in some fairly dramatic changes to the landscape as well. ![]() Aside from patchy tufts of desert grass and the occasional shrub or tree, the fire-prone landscape is mainly one of undulating red dunes, desert pavement, and sandy plains.įor tens of thousands of years, nomadic Aboriginal people traveled the harsh landscape around Lake MacKay looking for food and water. The Gibson Desert in Western Australia is a vast, desolate, and beautiful place. Editor’s Note: Today’s caption is the answer to Earth Observatory’s September Puzzler.
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