Colleagues at the U.S.D.A. Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and I are using Google Earth Pro to visualize airborne infrared imagery of southern California wildfires and compare with model simulations. Our research investigates the mechanisms for fire spread, including how wildfires draw themselves up canyons, split into two fire fronts, and how the behavior changes as the fires spread into new fuel types. Google Earth has been invaluable in bringing the complex terrain, vegetation types, and fire extent and intensity together and making the complex situation understandable. Attached is an image of airborne infrared mapping of the Esperanza wildfire (October 2006) (hotter temperatures, such as yellow, indicating the most intense burning, where reads and dark reds indicate less intense burning). 
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