Colorado Fire

The Colorado Fire began on January 21st, 2022 was started by an escaped fire by the Palo Colorado Road. The wildfire burned 687 acres between Carmel-by-the-Sea and Big Sur. The Colorado Fire was driven towards the coast by strong winds leading to the shut down of the Bixby Bridge and a section of Highway 1. The fire was completely contained as of February 5th, 2022. No injuries or causalities have been reported; one structure was destroyed. The image above shows the fire captured in a Land Surface Temperature image from ECOSTRESS on February 3rd, 2022 at 01:11 PM PDT. As California is currently in a drought, there are concerns that 2022 will see a severe wildfire season; ECOSTRESS allows for the monitoring of the drought and of wildfires.

ECOSTRESS is a thermal instrument on the International Space Station that measures the temperature of the ground, which is hotter than the air temperature during the day. It was launched to the space station in 2018. Its primary mission is to identify critical thresholds of water use and water stress in plants and to detect the timing, location, and predictive factors leading to plant water uptake decline and/or cessation. The nature of the high-resolution data provided by ECOSTRESS allows it to record heat related phenomena such as heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California built and manages the ECOSTRESS mission for the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. ECOSTRESS is an Earth Venture Instrument mission; the program is managed by NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

More information about ECOSTRESS is available here: https://ecostress.jpl.nasa.gov/.

For information on Earth science activities aboard the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/issearthscience.