Adam's Blogroll: click through to the author's blog
Outside of Australia, it can be a challenge to get a grasp of how bad the bushfires actually are. There have been some attempts that overlay a map of Australia over various locations, but they’ve varied in accuracy. This scrolling unit chart by Reuters Graphics makes the comparison more concrete.
Each square represents a square kilometer, a counter at the top ticks up as you scroll, and geographic points of reference appear as you go down. Effective.
With all of the maps of fire in Australia, be sure to check out this piece by Georgina Rannard for BBC News on how some of the maps can easily be misinterpreted when seen out of context.
Posted by in BBC, fire, Mistaken Data
For The Washington Post, Sergio Peçanha and Tim Wallace use maps to show why we need to adjust the common view of the Amazon up in flames. It’s about the fires on the fringes.
Tags: Amazon, fire, Washington Post
Posted by in Amazon, fire, maps, Washington Post
For the NASA Earth Observatory, Adam Voiland describes about two decades of fires:
The animation above shows the locations of actively burning fires on a monthly basis for nearly two decades. The maps are based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area. White pixels show the high end of the count—as many as 30 fires in a 1,000-square-kilometer area per day. Orange pixels show as many as 10 fires, while red areas show as few as 1 fire per day.
There are a lot of fires, but a bit surprising given the news lately, the total area burned each year is decreasing.
For Bloomberg, Mira Rojanasakul and Tatiana Freitas discuss why the Amazon rainforest is on fire:
Commodities are key drivers behind the increased pace of deforestation. An analysis of tree loss from 2001 to 2015 shows that most of the Amazon was lost to commodity-driven deforestation—or “long-term, permanent conversion of forest and shrubland to a non-forest land use such as agriculture, mining or energy infrastructure.”
Peter Aldhous for BuzzFeed News delves into the increasing number of wildfires in California:
Most of California’s rain and snow falls in between October and March, which means that fire season peaks in the summer, as vegetation dies and dries out. In Southern California, the season extends into the fall, when Santa Ana winds, which blow from the dry interior toward the coast, whip up small fires into major conflagrations.
As the state has dried and warmed, the fire season has started earlier and larger areas have burned. Similar changes have occurred across the western US.
Grab the data and code to look for yourself.
Tags: BuzzFeed, California, fire
Posted by in BuzzFeed, California, fire, Statistical Visualization
The Mendocino Complex Fire, now the largest in California ever, continues to burn. I live a couple of hundred miles away, but the sky is yellow and orange at times, and it was smokey a few days ago. It’s a bit crazy. Lazaro Gamio for Axios provides a quick view to show scale with an animated graphic compared against Washington, D.C. and Manhattan.
Tags: Axios, California, fire, scale
Based on data from CAL FIRE, Erin Ross, for Axios, plotted California wildfires that spanned at least 300 acres since 2000. Each triangle represents a fire, where the height represents acres burned (width is the same for all triangles) and color represents duration. The fires appear to be burning hotter and longer.
I wonder if it’s worth doubling up on the triangle encoding by using width to represent duration, similar to the Washington Post graphic made during the elections.
Posted by in Axios, fire, Statistical Visualization
Fire spread over Los Angeles, but the famous art works in the Getty Center stayed put. John Schwartz and Guilbert Gates reporting for The New York Times:
The Getty’s architect, Richard Meier, built fire resistance into the billion-dollar complex, said Ron Hartwig, vice president of communications for the J. Paul Getty Trust. These hills are fire prone, but because of features like the 1.2 million square feet of thick travertine stone covering the outside walls, the crushed rock on the roofs and even the plants chosen for the brush-cleared grounds, “The safest place for the artwork to be is right here in the Getty Center,” he said.
It’s a short visual piece, but I found the forethought in building design and the straightforward graphics fascinating.
Tags: fire, Getty, Los Angeles, New York Times
Posted by in fire, getty, Infographics, Los Angeles, New York Times
Using both satellite images and ground surveys, The New York Times maps the damage due to the fires in Santa Rosa. Crazy. I live a couple of hours away from the area and I still could smell the smoke.
See also Nicolette Hayes’ more personal map.
Tags: fire, New York Times
Posted by in fire, maps, New York Times