18
July, 2023
Tuesday
Data Puzzle Virtual Teacher Workshop - Megafires
Register Here
Join us on Tuesday, July 18th from 8 - am - 12 pm PT, 9 am - 1 pm MT, 10 am - 2 pm CT, 11 am -3 pm ET as developer Jon Griffith describes the latest Data Puzzle, "Megafires: Rare Occurrences or the New Normal?", a 2-day MS/HS resource in which students analyze megafire frequency data to explain how and why the number of megafires has changed over time.
About Data Puzzles
Inspired by our friends at Data Nuggets, Data Puzzles combine classroom-friendly scientific datasets with the research-backed pedagogical practices of Ambitious Science Teaching to give your students the ultimate inquiry-based learning experience.
Megafires: Rare Occurrences or the New Normal? overview
"Megafire" is a term that is used frequently by the media but can have many different meanings to describe wildfires. You may be surprised to learn there is no one accepted definition of the term. Scientists who study megafires are developing their own definition of a megafire that typically describes extreme fire events characterized by their intensity, speed, duration, impact, and size. In considering the size of megafires, Dr. Natasha Stavros of the Earth Lab Analytics Hub at the University of Colorado, Boulder, describes megafires as wildfires that are larger than 95% of all of the fire events being studied in a 1984-2019 dataset. Using these parameters, megafires are larger than 20,000 football fields in size! In this Data Puzzle, students will engage with an interactive reading before analyzing authentic datasets to discover how and why the number of megafires has changed over time.
Details:
WHO: 7-12 science teachers
WHAT: Webinar focused on the latest Data Puzzle resource, "Megafires: Rare Occurrences or the New Normal?"
WHEN: Tuesday, July 18th from 8 - am - 12 pm PT, 9 am - 1 pm MT, 10 am - 2 pm CT, 11 am -3 pm ET
WHY: Engage with the Data Puzzle framework in the context of contemporary research!
HOW: Register for the teacher workshop to receive an invitation and Zoom link for the event.
Megafires and Climate Change - Worsening wildfires around the world
Megafires, typically defined as covering more than 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares or 400 square kilometres), are accelerated by high temperatures and drought. By the close of 2019, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Russian Federation and the United States all experienced megafires on what many have called unprecedented scales. The Australian 2019–2020 bushfire season is already on track to be one of the worst on record. The twin weather extremes of drought and heatwaves, driven by climate change, only increase the risk of recurring catastrophic fire seasons for Australia. Taking climate action is necessary if we don't want this to become the new normal.
