Back in the 1980s, one of the most coveted summer jobs for students – after Surf Life Saver, was being a Fire Spotter. That meant arming yourself with a good supply of books, snacks and water and sitting in a fire tower above the tree tops, hoping you wouldn’t see a wisp of smoke anywhere in that ocean of green. Most summers you didn't and at the end you got a nice fat cheque. Forty years on, satellites do the spotting and the students are serving coffee or asking "Would you like fries with that?" Meanwhile, the fires have gotten bigger and more frequent. We now have “Megafires” and Firestorms which burn over large areas. Megafires are wildfires which burn 100,000 acres (40,500 hectares) or more and exhibit extreme behaviour—intensity, duration, and resistance to suppression. Some, like California’s August Complex or Australia’s Black Summer fires, have crossed into “Gigafire” territory, burning over a million acres. Australia's 2019 - 2020 fires covered 17 m he...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people