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Fire Chars Santa Rosa Island

- A wildland fire burned large areas of Santa Rosa Island (Channel Islands National Park); part of the island was closed while firefighters worked to contain it. - Landsat 9 OLI captured false-color and natural-color images on May 16, 2026, showing the burned area and active fire front. - The burned area was about 5,690 acres on May 16 and grew to roughly 16,600 acres by May 19; the perimeter remained uncontained. - Officials and news accounts said the fire was human-caused and it burned through grassland, coastal sage scrub, and island chaparral, near rare Torrey pines.

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Photo by @weekendtripcreator / Unsplash

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NASA Satellites Uncover Large-Scale Ocean Nutrient Stress

NASA Satellites Uncover Large-Scale Ocean Nutrient Stress

- A study published June 5 (Science Advances) combines two decades of NASA MODIS satellite data, ocean surveys, and genetic markers in Prochlorococcus to map phytoplankton nutrient stress globally. - Warming sea-surface temperatures increase stratification, reduce upwelling, and limit surface nutrients, with strongest stress in subtropical gyres and the South

Fighting Fire With Fire

Fighting Fire With Fire

- NASA’s Aqua/MODIS imagery captured smoke from numerous fires in Australia’s Northern Territory on May 28, 2026. - Many detected fires are deliberate prescribed burns, typically lit in mornings to manage savanna fuel loads. - Indigenous practices and modern programs (e.g., WALFA, Arnhem Land Fire Abatement)

NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll

NASA-Funded Study Shows Wildfire Smoke’s Hidden Ozone Toll

- A NASA-supported study found that over the past decade wildfires have increased ground-level ozone (smog) across much of the contiguous U.S., worsening air quality far from fires. - Nationally, fires offset nearly four years of ozone-control gains; in the Midwest wildfires erased about 5.3 years of progress