Fires flare inside a Selous Game Reserve tile: 6 hot detections, then 12 on a later satellite pass

What we saw

• NASA fire detections — 6 detections with FRP ≥ 20 MW in 2 d (max 28.0 MW). (Sep 26, 2026) See the source ↗
• NASA fire detections — 12 detections with FRP ≥ 20 MW in 2 d (max 84.5 MW). (Sep 28, 2026) See the source ↗
• NASA fire detections — 12 hot detections again on a later pass (2026-09-28). (Sep 28, 2026)

What it might not be

• Confirmation is a repeat pass from the same sensor, not an independent source.
• Cannot distinguish wildfire from managed, agricultural or prescribed burning.
• Detection area is the watchlist rectangle, not the reserve's legal polygon.
• VIIRS misses fires under cloud or smoke and short-lived fires between its roughly twice-daily overpasses.
• A gap or outage in the satellite feed would look like calm.
• No cause or responsibility can be inferred without land-tenure and concession data.
• Cannot tell wildfire from managed burning, agricultural fire or a legal prescribed burn.
• VIIRS misses fires under cloud/smoke and small or short-lived fires between overpasses (~2/day).
• The watched boundary is the watchlist's bbox, not the legal polygon, until protected_areas (M3) lands.
• S-NPP products end 1 Nov 2026 — the default source is NOAA-20; a source outage looks like calm.
• Says nothing about cause or responsibility; attribution needs land-tenure and concession layers.

What would change our mind

Newer satellite images that show no change, a correction from the data source, or a reply with evidence from the ground. If that happens, the case is marked “Turned out wrong” — in public — and it stays on this site.

Why this was published

Two separate sources agreed — NASA fire detections, then NASA fire detections — and a reviewer checked the evidence before it went up.

Replies

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