Literacy Matters- today reading maps, understanding topography, listening to professionals and using a phone or being prepared could literally save your life or the life of someone you love.  USGS has remote sensing handouts that teachers and parents can use that show change over time on urban and rural surfaces.  Imagine the Hubble Telescope turned the other way to help us see the Earth and where there are surfaces, volume, moisture, heat, manmade challenges, coastal or flood plain alterations, crops, forests, cities, towns, trees, forests, deserts…our own home (ecos) to learn about, address and understand.

The news has addressed Science and Space this Summer whether podcasts, weather, or SciFri and more.  Now you can link to real time data and see the difference that assessing and planning can make even in or especially in moments of retreat from danger or repositioning for safety, regrouping, assessing emergency resources, or resting to regroup and plan.

Using tools like Earth Observer to online real time news sites (see SF Gate or SF Chronicle fire map for example) can prepare a child for finding Science fascinating to demonstrating parents are now modeling how to embrace science in the process of following fire marshal mandates.  Regardless satellite is now showing how we use digital modeling in our daily needs like GPS and Bird Migration (citizen science) to making sure our family, friends, and property are safe (laptops and Google Earth).  The immediacy of needing dependable and understandable maps, graphics, and probabilities or conditions is what someone in Star Trek to Space Force rely on, but comedy or tragedy, drama or documentary, we have a wildfire moment in our state where the Governor to safe passage make using digital means and resources can make public agency jobs understandable and computer assets and storage or imaging  visible as the decisions that will be made hour to hour, minute to minute in protecting people, land, homes, animals, and assets by understanding the topography and conditions over time.  These disaster and resource protection jobs protect resources, friends, food, supplies, and firefighters.  Whether a farmer, a business, a town or city, or even the Red Cross, the Water and Power Engineer, the Transportation Planner; you and your animals and or your doctor and hospital or local market…….motel, park, forest, phone tower or dam depend on infrastructure, systemic analysis, and current information to direct movement or timing during a seasonal, a weather, or Anthropocene caused or accident/human error caused event. Because of consumer electronics, telephony, apps, storage, transmission and tools, there is consumer accessible tools to protect your family and tools for experts that can make all the difference save lives or get students excited about what they can learn when they return to school or when they get a meal and some rest, some bandwidth and can shelter in place.  It's a teachable moment about how far we have come from windmills pumping water, the aquaduct, to water scooping planes, to rooms of scientists and communicators state wide or nationally helping us to make it through this Western Drought period and the onslaught of dry lightening events while landcover grasses and trees are very dry.  No wonder we now teach problem solving, decision making and group collaboration in elementary school to high school.  The big map or big idea kind of science is present in planning a trip, staying safe and on budget, or role playing new jobs where engineering, math, science, and communications, writing, mapping, drawing, and coding or calculations can come together making tough problems understandable and conditions and resources measurable.

You may not have known the news, the newspaper, the air quality management service, or the freeways are all using these resources and now you and your children can learn more about this when you evacuate, get to safety, or search for resources, air quality, destination time, routes of roads open or to feel more secure when you need to check conditions. Suddenly math, technology, engineering, supply chains, science, topography, soil moisture, weather, forestry, and data collection.  The automaticity of getting information, sending a video, audio chats, or seeing the route can help (when it works) speed decisions or get cars and families to safety.  We are now using our phones to learn about the world around us in real time whether sending a picture to a doctor or finding out what to pack or where we can get more masks, gloves, or gas.

This change has been gradual and ever increasing. America invested in Landsat in 1970 and the benefits are continuing to pay off.  During these wildfires and into the future, Landsat 8 and soon 9 (2021)  will allow scientists, students, teachers, researchers, farmers, public safety and infrastructure engineers, cities, towns, regions and states during this heat wave and drought to help citizens in real time.

This satellite program monitors the Earth from space for the benefit of all mankind.  By looking at change over time in 30m x 30 m areas it is helping CalFire, UC Specialists, Fire crews and even the Red Cross and public and private agencies to assess the impact of the ongoing fires in Northern and Southern California for example and to tell disaster staff and administrators how to keep the community safer, sound, and when and how to evacuate, where to go, and what the conditions are.

Whether you have ever realized the power of a smart phone can not only direct you safely to your destination or a gas station, water, shelter, food, or supplies- it is also serving the State of California to direct firefighting, animal rescue, supplies and disaster services/medicare resources/air quality data/and transportation safely for those working as rescue professionals, notification staff, highway patrols, and ambulance drivers, doctors, truckers and so much more.

In an emergency, in a weather event, in a circumstance created by heat, isolation, wind changes, or dry brush, Landsat is part of a state, national, and international resource that is working 24 hours a day linking real time data to expert decisions and wildfire specialists to watersheds, the bureau of land management, our agriculture and natural resource experts now.   Our Governor and state agencies to work in time, on time, and with state of the art engineering to save lives, homes, crops, animals, trees, children and help consumers make better decisions.  Whether using Google Earth, a directors app, or the CalFires public info website, you will be able to see more than what is just the smoke in front of your face or the temperature reminding you to drink water and stay cool.  In our horizons for many of us, a handheld device is serving us not unlike the Medics in the original Startrek from a wrist band, to a watch, to a pump, to a thermometer, we are now able assess health, give oxygen reports to our doctors, or map out decisions for shopping or transferring funds. We may have a device for breathing more easily to a phone to let everyone know where we are and how we are. It is a brave new world full of opportunities and possibilities if we will use all this data for the greater and individual good.  Stay safe, learn a lot, be cooperative, volunteer, ask for help and use your devices in concert with those charged to protect and serve.  You can now triage a route, avoid a traffic jam, or look at the weather.  The bigger picture and group safety relies on cooperation, selflessness, and good information. Remember to ask if your phone towers are down, if there is newer, more complete info to rely on. Safety first.

Please use the following resources to make your way safe as possible in continuing hot, humid, and dangerous conditions, stay current with wind changes, site closures, and disaster relief communicators et al. By working together we will get through this with eyes wide open and social distancing, sanitizing, and good data.

Please stay safe, drink water, stay alert, wear a mask and follow directions when asked with the best information and the best calm and informed attitude you can muster.

The News: - unprecendented conditions require readiness- cooperation- and research...

https://www.ready.gov/

The Apps- USGS and remote sensing:

www.fsapps.nwcg.gov/baer/resources

For Students:

https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/formal-education/

USDA and Forestry Active Mapping:

https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/

Printable map:

https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/afm/data/lg_fire/lg_fire_nifc_2020-08-24.pdf

Classroom materials:

https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/133/pdf/RemSens-Student_web.pdf

Teacher Resources- EOKids to NASA, Goddard, and more:

https://www.usgs.gov/land-resources/nli/landsat/education

Seeing (anew) what you are looking at for safety and sanity:

https://www.usgs.gov/center-news/bauer-discusses-peer-review-s-role-strengthening-remote-sensing-science?qt-news_science_products=1#qt-news_science_products

Agriculture and Natural Resources collaborating across the spectrum:

https://ucanr.edu/

Landsat 8 to Landsat 9:

https://www.usgs.gov/land-resources/nli/landsat/landsat-9?qt-science_support_page_related_con=0#qt-science_support_page_related_con

From Paul Revere to Astronomy and Back to helping our neighborhoods -learning in real time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope

CAL Fire Maps and info:

https://www.fire.ca.gov/

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/trafficinfo/ca.htm

Budgeting for Success:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/california/articles/2018-08-01/the-latest-california-will-spend-what-it-takes-for-fires

Learning from the Conditions, Costs, Impact and learning in real time:

https://www.fire.ca.gov/stats-events/

Cataloging and learning in cities and in rural areas:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/52933

Volunteer:

https://www.californiavolunteers.ca.gov/

Libraries and Air quality tracking:

https://abc7news.com/alameda-free-library-clean-air-center-bay-area-wildfires-covid-19/6383757/

https://abc7news.com/weather/track-bay-area-air-quality-levels-impacted-by-smoke/6377326/

Journalists are capturing info for the public:

https://abc7news.com/1214-mile-smoke-plume-from-ca-wildfires-visible-from-space/6382506/

https://abc7news.com/track-wildfires-across-ca-with-this-interactive-map/6378340/

Highway Conditions:

https://roads.dot.ca.gov/