Fire forced the closure and evacuation of Jasper National Park this week, and the Jasper townsite itself was directly hit by flames on Wednesday. Parks Canada estimates about a third of the town’s structures have been destroyed. Municipal officials released a preliminary map today showing the damaged and destroyed buildings in the town. They stress that the information “is based on the damage that is visible from the street. We have not been inside buildings or seen the backside of properties. There may be additional damage to homes and businesses that isn’t visible from the street. Buildings marked as ‘not damaged’ on the map could also have internal damage caused by smoke and water. Consider this a preliminary description of properties affected in Jasper.” CBC News coverage.

Devastating floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, have killed at least 95 people and displaced 150,000 more. NASA Earth Observatory posted the above Landsat 8 image of downtown Porto Alegre (population: 1.5 million), as well as MODIS images of the overflowing Jacuí River. CNN has before-and-after Maxar imagery of Porto Alegre.

The Copernicus-2A satellite imaged the smoke plume and lava flow from the eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near Grindavík, Iceland yesterday; Marco Langbroek processed natural-colour and short-wave infrared imagery to achieve the above image, which he posted to Bluesky. [Kottke]

Previously: Earthquake Swarms and an Imminent Eruption in Iceland.

A swarm of thousands of earthquakes have been recorded on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula over the past three weeks. It’s a strong indication that a volcanic eruption is imminent. The town of Grindavík has been evacuated as a result. The Icelandic Meteorological Office has a page with updates and maps of earthquakes and ground deformation from the magmatic intrusion (examples above). A post on Earthquake Insights has more maps, plus geological and historical context.

Scientists have now mapped the seafloor around the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano, and as a result we have learned just how massive the January 2022 eruption was. By comparing their soundings with 2017 data, they determined that at least 9.5 km³ of material was discharged. Debris was found 80 km from the volcano, and the volcano’s caldera has been replaced by a cavern 850 m deep. More from the NIWA media release and from ABC (Australia).

Previously: Remotely Operated Vessel Maps Tonga Caldera.

Wildfire Aware is an interactive map of wildfires in the United States that lists fires by the number of personnel fighting them. Selecting a fire brings up a lot more information, drawn on 22 layers from Esri’s ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. [ArcGIS Blog]

The satellite imagery of the flooding in Pakistan is insufficient to grasp how widespread the devastation is, unless you zoom out enough (which you can do at the MODIS page). The imagery focuses on the flood plain of the Indus River: it covers most of Sindh province and a good chunk of Baluchistan. See The Washington Post’s maps for perspective. The Earth Observatory and MODIS pages, as well as the CNN article, have before/after image sliders: Earth Observatory compares the situation to three weeks ago, the other two to last year.

Update, 1 Sept:

The ESA has released the above image based on Copernicus Sentinel-1 data. More than a third of Pakistan is now under water.

Update, 3 Sept: The Guardian has more before/after imagery.

As part of the Tonga Eruption Seabed Mapping Project, a robotic vessel has conducted a bathymetric survey of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano’s underwater caldera. Said volcano, you will recall, erupted spectacularly last January. The 12-metre vessel, USV Maxlimer, was controlled remotely from 16,000 km away, and carried sensors to measure the state of the seabed, temperature, salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and chemical plumes. More at the press release. BBC News coverage.

Previously: The Rise and Fall of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai; Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, Before and After; How Satellites Revealed the Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha‘apai Eruption.

Every two years or so, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information updates poster maps based on its Global Historical Tsunami, Significant Earthquake and Significant Volcanic Eruption databases; the 2022 editions are now available. The posters, made in collaboration with the International Tsunami Information Center, are distributed to emergency response personnel; they provide a historical overview of where earthquakes or eruptions took place, or tsunami originated, going back literally millenia. The maps can be downloaded in PDF format: Significant Earthquakes 2150 B.C. to A.D. 2022, Tsunami Sources 1610 B.C. to A.D. 2022, and Significant Volcanic Eruptions 4360 B.C. to A.D. 2022.

Previously: Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, Before and After.

NASA Earth Observatory has released digital elevation maps of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai both before and after the volcanic eruption earlier this month.

The digital elevation maps above and below show the dramatic changes at Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, the uppermost part of a large underwater volcano. It rises 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) from the seafloor, stretches 20 kilometers (12 miles) across, and is topped by a submarine caldera 5 kilometers in diameter. The island is part of the rim of the Hunga Caldera and was the only part of the edifice that stood above water.

Now all of the new land is gone, along with large chunks of the two older islands.

The third edition of a map showing landslides that have caused fatalities in Canada since 1771, created over six years by Geological Survey of Canada research scientist Andrée Blais-Stevens, was recently released. The Ottawa Citizen has the story; the map in question can be downloaded in PDF format here (48.7 MB).

NASA Earth Observatory has had several stories on the western U.S. wildfires, gathered here. This story summarizes the situation; satellite images of the smoke generated by the fires can be seen here, here and here.

In today's Sunday edition of @washingtonpost pic.twitter.com/qHosujRKrG

— Lauren Tierney (@tierneyl) September 13, 2020

Marena Brinkhurst of Mapbox has a comprehensive list of open data sources relating to the wildfires, smoke, and air quality.

Mark Altaweel at GIS Lounge looks at how GIS is being used to map wildfires, smoke and air pollution.

Previously: California Wildfires, 2020 Edition.

Wildfire status tracking. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services posts a daily map showing the status of active wildfires in the state. It’s basically a one-page PDF you can print and hand out: decidedly old school and not remotely interactive. The New York Times has a series of maps tracking the various wildfire complexes. See also the Los Angeles Times interactive wildfires map, the address of which will probably work next year too. [Maps Mania/Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs]

Forecasting. NOAA’s High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) atmospheric model includes an experimental smoke forecast. It and other smoke and fire models are available as hourly static images (see above) or via this interactive map. [Maps Mania/UWCIMSS]

Google is adding wildfire boundaries to Search and Maps: it will provide warnings to nearby users and have an impact on driving directions. [Engadget/TechCrunch/The Verge]

NASA Earth Observatory has before and after imagery showing the damage done to corn and soybeans fields by the derecho that hit Iowa on August 10.

NASA has released a map of the likely extent of damage from Tuesday’s explosion in Beirut.

Synthetic aperture radar data from space shows ground surface changes from before and after a major event like an earthquake. In this case, it is being used to show the devastating result of an explosion.

On the map, dark red pixels—like those present at and around the Port of Beirut—represent the most severe damage. Areas in orange are moderately damaged and areas in yellow are likely to have sustained somewhat less damage. Each colored pixel represents an area of 30 meters (33 yards).

The map is based on data from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel program, and was analyzed by NASA’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis team and the Earth Observatory of Singapore.

The Washington Post’s coverage is typically first rate, its maps providing both detailed coverage and context: start there. More detailed maps come from the Kīlauea section of the USGS’s Volcano Hazards Program website, with fissure maps of the entire eastern rift zone (see above) and thermal maps of the Leilani Estates fissures receiving daily or near-daily updates.

The eruption was preceded and accompanied by a number of earthquakes; NOAA has created an animated map showing the incidence, magnitude and depth of the earthquakes that took place during the week of the eruption.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Halifax Explosion, which took place when a French cargo ship laden with explosives collided with another ship in Halifax Harbour. The resulting blast killed around 2,000 people and devastated the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia; it was the largest artificial explosion of the pre-nuclear age.

Maps Mania points to a couple of interactive maps of the explosion produced by Canadian news media. CBC News’s A City Destroyed: Experience the Halifax Explosion 100 Years Later is a bit over-produced, with 360-degree video and a non-clickable map that immediately segues into a 3D environment with limited interactivity. (It also pegs one of my CPU cores.) Global News’s interactive map is more modest in scope: developed by Patrick Cain, it’s a Google Maps mashup that points to the known addresses of those killed by the explosion. (Casualties in Dartmouth, across the harbour from Halifax, aren’t mapped because the data weren’t available.)

The destruction wrought by the Tubbs Fire in northern California, and the speed at which it spread, is mapped with excruciating detail by the New York Times graphics team.

Previously: Mapping the Northern California Wildfires.

Maps and satellite imagery of the wildfires in Northern California include the San Francisco Chronicle’s interactive map; Robin Kraft’s interactive map  showing satellite imagery from before and after the fire; this New York Times page mapping building damage in Santa Rosa; the Washington Post’s coverage of the devastation; and NASA Earth Observatory’s images of the smoke plumes here and here.

Today Facebook announced disaster maps for use by relief organizations. Based on aggregated and anonymized user data, the maps of users’ location, movement and check-ins can, Facebook says, provide relief organizations with valuable information about where the need is greatest. At launch only the Red Cross, UNICEF and the World Food Programme will have access to the data; a process will be established to determine how it will be shared with others. [Engadget]

• Evacuation zone maps from the City of Calgary, in PDF format.
• For a wider view, an interactive map of Calgary evacuation zones from CBC News.
• A map of flooding zones across Alberta.
• A flood report map from the Calgary Herald, using reader submissions.
• A mobile site for crowdmapping flood reports (thanks, Matt).

Update, 10:15 PM:

• The Alberta provincial government’s Flood Hazard Map Application; requires Flash (via Colby Cosh).

Update, June 22 at 8:25 AM:

• Google’s Alberta Flooding Crisis Map.