Mapping Australia’s Bushfires

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA imagery of the bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria can be found here (from which I took the above image) and here. See also Universe Today. Imagery from NASA’s MODIS imagery is apparently being updated twice daily.

This imagery has been incorporated into Google’s response to the fires, which began with a map mashup of information from the County Fire Authority about fire locations and status. The Google Australia blog explains: “To explain the map, the number in each marker shows the number of fires at the location. A green marker means the area is called ‘safe’ by the CFA. Yellow means ‘controlled’. Orange means ‘contained’. Red means ‘going’.”

Google Maps Mania links to map mashups: ABC News, this one, this one.

Google Maps Mania also notes a macabre use of Street View: a visual record of towns destroyed by the fires.

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