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Why Are Wildfires in California Getting Bigger Over Time?
Duration: 50 minutes
Grade Levels: 6-8
Middle school students, as scientists, analyze and interpret intentional burns, wildfires, and weather data to answer the following driving question: Why are wildfires in California getting bigger over time?
Grade Levels: 6-8
Duration: 50 minutes
Objectives:
- Analyze and interpret intentional burns, wildfires, and weather data to identify patterns and cause-and-effect relationships to construct an explanation of why 14 of the 20 largest California wildfires since 1932 happened in the 2010s or 2020s
Climate Standards Connections
| Next Generation Science Standards | ||
| Grade | Performance Expectation | Description |
| 6-8 | MS-ESS3-2 | Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects. |
| Climate Change Connections | severe weather natural hazards | |
| Clarification Statement & Assessment Boundary | Emphasis is on how some natural hazards, such as volcanic eruptions and severe weather, are preceded by phenomena that allow for reliable predictions, but others, such as earthquakes, occur suddenly and with no notice, and thus are not yet predictable. Examples of natural hazards can be taken from interior processes (such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions), surface processes (such as mass wasting and tsunamis), or severe weather events (such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods). Examples of data can include the locations, magnitudes, and frequencies of the natural hazards. Examples of technologies can be global (such as satellite systems to monitor hurricanes or forest fires) or local (such as building basements in tornado- prone regions or reservoirs to mitigate droughts). | |