English: Dozens of fires burning on the island of Luzon, Philippines, pumped streams of gray smoke into the air in late March 2023. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Aqua satellite acquired a true-color image of the smoky scene on March 23. Red “hot spots” mark actively burning fire.

The peak agricultural fire season, in which landowners set fires to manage land or clear forest to put into agricultural use, typically begins in early February and lasts through mid-May across the Philippines. Given the location, the large number of fires, and the time of year, most of these fires are likely agricultural in origin.

The end of the dry season (March) also carries significant risk of wildfires. On March 20, local media reported that several forest fires had burnt more than 45 hectares of land in the province of Ilocos Norte. Ilocos Norte sits in the northwest corner of Luzon. While those particular blazes had been quenched by the time this image was taken, it is likely that at least a few of the fires captured here are wildfires.