Sheep Fire

The Sheep Fire started on June 12th, 2022, Northeast of the town of Wrightwood in San Bernardino County. The fire burned 865 acres and was contained on June 19th, 2022. Due to the proximity of the Sheep Fire to Wrightwood, the town was evacuated. The Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains and part of Highway 2 were closed due to the fire. There were no casualties or injuries as a result of the Sheep Fire. The fire was captured in an ECOSTRESS Land Surface Temperature image on 08:27 AM PDT on June 15th and shows the temperature of the fire surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 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.