English: On April 27, 2023, strong winds blew two long plumes—one of smoke and the second, dust— westward across southeast Kazakhstan. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a true-color image of plumes across Lake Balkhash on that same day.

Crescent-shaped Lake Balkhash spans about 17,000 square kilometers (6,600 square miles), making it one of Asia’s largest lakes. The lake’s waters are often filled with milky-tinted swirls, primarily due to suspended sediment, either stirred up from the shallow bottom by wind and waves or poured into Balkhash from the rivers that feed it. The Ili River, which enters along the southwestern shoreline, brings about 70 to 80 percent of fresh water into the lake and creates a large, fertile delta.

The Ili River Delta appears dark in this image, and is spotted with a few red marks. These red spots, called “hot spots”, are located where the thermal bands on the MODIS instrument detected high temperatures. In this location at this type of the year, they are likely due to actively burning fire, mostly likely set to clear land ahead of planting crops or to freshen pasture. The Ili River Delta is a rich agricultural area where fire is often used to manage land, especially in the springtime.

A cluster of large hot spots sits on the south-central shoreline, and is the source of the large smoke plume that stretches across the lake. According to the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), this is a forest fire. First reported on April 17, the fire spanned 22,271 hectares as of April 30.

The most southerly long, light-colored plume rises from a mineral-encrusted, dry portion of the lake bed at the tip of Lake Balkhash. It almost certainly contains dried minerals, especially salt, along with fine dust.