Fires release vast amounts of carbon

Burning peat swamps in Kalimantan, Borneo. ESA-led research has established that when these peat swamps - formed over thousands of years - start to smoulder, they release vast quantities of carbon. Multiple Envisat sensors were used to study the 2002 fires. The ESA project GLOBCARBON aims to use Earth Observation to gather information of interest to the carbon research community, including the distribution of burned areas. Image courtesy Dr Florian Siegert/Remote Sensing Solutions GmbH.