Examining the Smokehouse Creek Texas Wildfire Using Web GIS data and tools
You and your students can powerfully and easily examine current events using Web GIS data and tools. This essay models the study of one such current event, the Smokehouse Creek wildfire, which is sadly consuming much terrain in Texas and impacting many lives.
Teaching about current events can be readily incorporated into the classroom using open data portals and web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online Map Viewer and ArcGIS Online apps. This is a technique that my colleagues and I have named "Geonews", described in my essay, here: Teaching the GeoNews Using GIS Technologies and th... - Esri Community. In a nutshell, "Geonews" simply means teaching about current events, whether a natural hazards, political incident, scientific discovery, from local to global scale, on a regular basis in the classroom--it could be once a week such as every Monday morning, or even for 5 minutes at the beginning of each class period. And I submit that teaching, learning, and understanding events is not complete without considering that event's spatial aspects. And using Web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online, apps, maps, and imagery can serve as powerful and easy-to-use tools to teach these topics. I (and many of my education colleagues) have successfully tested these methods in classrooms in the USA and in many countries, from primary to university level, and in after-school and lifelong learning sessions in public libraries. I have also incorporated these methods into courses I share online, such as this one on Environmental GIS.
This approach can be effectively used by instructors as they teach, but even more powerful is when students are assigned the task to select and teach their peers in class about one current event. A student, or group of students, can be assigned the task for, say, the beginning of Week 2 in a geography, GIS, environmental science, or even in a current events or political science course, and others, as well. Another Group can take Week 3, and so on. I have found that when students get involved, creativity happens! Moreover, I have found that the students using this approach really make use of their maps and the spatial perspective to learn about and teach others about the event or issue. This is a very effective way of teaching spatial thinking and the use of geotechnologies.
The grim details of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire can be studied using GIS in many ways. I advise starting with the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World Wildfire Aware app. No sign in is required, the real-time wildfire perimeters and points are available and additional information for you to ask these questions of your students: How far is the wildfire from where you live? What is the pattern and shape of the wildfire? How large is the wildfire at its furthest extent? How large is it compared to the areal size of your own city, county, or region? What towns are impacted both in the wildfire perimeter and also downwind from it? What landforms and ecoregions are in this area? What animal, bird, and plant habitats are impacted? What wildfires are nearby, and near to where you live?
My colleague Bern Szukalski and I recently focused on how to teach with these amazing and versatile ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World apps in one of our GIS Higher Education monthly chats.
Use other tools in conjunction with this Wildfire Aware App: Examine Google street views if available in this area to understand the cultural and physical landscape there (vegetation, landforms, businesses, homes) to drive home the point that these are real events impacting real people's lives. Read selected news reports, many of which increasingly include before-and-after swipe maps and satellite imagery. What other resources can you find to help make your research more well-rounded?
Next, dig deeper by opening up ArcGIS Online and accessing the Map Viewer. Add population density from the "human imprint" layer and also from US Census Bureau's American Community Survey to understand the total population, age, income, and other characteristics of those impacted. Add transportation to understand which arteries could be impacted and evacuation routes. Add rivers and watersheds to understand how sedimentation could impact water quality. Use world biomes and the North American ecoregions to more fully understand habitat, plants, and animals in the area. Use the real-time weather feed to assess the possible future spread of the wildfire. Add NOAA weather satellite imagery to see how the region is impacted by wildfire smoke.
None of these ArcGIS Online activities require signing in, but next, dig deeper: Sign in to your ArcGIS Online organization, and once signed in, additional options will be available: You as the instructor can create maps and apps as teaching resources. Your students will be able to save their maps, perform spatial analysis, share their maps to you as their instructor and to their peers, create instant apps, dashboards, or story maps from these maps, and use the maps as part of their continually-updating professional portfolio. And for an even deeper investigation, they can bring the layers from those maps into ArcGIS Pro to perform further statistical and spatial analysis.
These same approaches can be used to study other wildfires, other hazards such as city fires, explosions, floods, eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, political strife, but balance it with teaching about a few happier events too--using these approaches students can present about a city marathon, new library or school opening, new open space, parade, celebration, sporting event, or something else happening locally or somewhere else in the world.
I have created two videos that walk students and faculty through several investigations using the above techniques, of this wildfire. The short version (1:45), which highlights the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app, is here: https://youtu.be/JI9Wjn7boFA?si=WbhFj1WhBvbSnapr
The longer version (6:52) includes the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app and a deeper dive using the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, is here: https://youtu.be/qGLY8zjD4dU?si=3g_jvmqbmz-w61qe.
I look forward to hearing your reactions, and meanwhile, all best wishes to those impacted by this and other natural hazards.