Even as the snow begins to retreat in the eastern part of Russia, fires are being set to clear the land for planting. This Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image from the Aqua satellite was captured on April 29, 2013. MODIS shows the fires as red dots on this image and also visible are smoke plumes rising from the fires which are most likely the result of growing-season activities for farmer in the region.
Fire is still used in many parts of the world fire as a resource management tool, clearing land for planting, renewing pastures, and returning the remains of the previous season's vegetation to the soil as nutrients. It is also frequently used to rid area of dry grasses and kindling before the coming dry season to mitigate the larger wildfires later on that are set by lightning strikes, careless humans, or arson, and burn out of control and end up destroying much larger areas of land in their path.