Satellite observations that detect and map fires provide important insight into the widespread nature of fire activity around the world. This visualization, which shows global satellite observations of fires in 2002 and 2003, goes on to focus on a region where fire plays a dominant role in the landscape: Southern California. The wildfires that roared through Southern California in the autumns of 2003 and 2007 were particularly fast-burning and destructive because people have actively suppressed fires in the region where residential development is expanding further and further into wild land areas.

How does climate change lead to an increase in size, intensity, and frequency of wildfires in California? Students will use the phenomenon of wildfire intensity increasing in California to explore the causes, effects and solutions to climate change in California.

Using this lesson plan students will be more aware of how plants and animals adapt to wildland fire. They will: Discuss the adaptive strategies of plants and animals to survive fire. Observe plants and animals in your local area. Design a plant or animal that is adapted for fire survival.

When smoke from wildfires swirls around health care facilities, prepared hospitals in California and Colorado use air quality tools to keep the indoor environment safe for patients and staff.

The Sentinel-2 10m Land Use/Land Cover time-series is live on ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World! This map provides an annual assessment of yearly global land cover from 2017–2021, in 9 different land cover classes, at 10-meter resolution. The new time-series animates the natural and anthropogenic processes that continue to transform our planet's landscapes and resources, giving researchers, planners, and the GIS community the information they need to make critical future decisions.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Tropical ecosystems can transition between forest and savanna but how these transitions are affected by changing rainfall patterns remains uncertain Climate changes interact with local grazing and wildfires to determine the growth of tropical trees and grasses A new study looks at how feedback between wildfires, herbivore grazing, and rainfall variability impacts the amount of tree cover in the tropics Researchers found that fires stabilize savannas under intermediate rainfall values while increasing rainfall variability boosted the potential for sudden transition between forest and savanna A similar phenomenon was found under drier rainfall conditions, but in this case herbivores kept grasslands open Forest-savanna transitions have important implications for ecosystem services and people How tropical forests and savannas will function in the future depends on interactions between rainfall, fires and herbivores Staal A., et al..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Located in Southern California's San Jacinto Mountains, the Natural Reserve System's (NRS) James Reserve is at the forefront of an effort to use high technology to gain insight into the natural world. Embedded cameras monitor the nesting cycles of birds, sensor networks track weather data on habitat microclimates, and computers map out the potential damage from wildfires. (29 minutes)

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and Common Core literacy strategies to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the nonfiction informational text, Wildfires. Wildfires can cause damage but also play a critical role in the renewal of forests and grasslands. Through the example of the 1988 Yellowstone fire, Wildfires highlights the effects and cycles of fires and shows the reader how critical fire is to regenerating forests and grasslands.