San Bernardino Wildland Fires: Assessing the Conditions of Pre-Fire and Post-Fire Vegetation in San Bernardino California with NASA Earth Observations

Our team investigated a case study in San Bernardino, CA to understand prescribed (“Rx”) burning, namely how the Angelus Oaks Understory Prescribed (AOU Rx) Burn protected urban development from the spread of the Line Fire in 2024. Our team partnered with the U.S. Forest Service and the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District, who are responsible for conducting prescribed burns and maintaining public safety via land management. Using NASA Earth observation data—International Space Station (ISS) Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, ISS Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station, Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2, and Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar—our team collected data from November 2023 through March 2025 to contextualize the vegetation conditions for the AOU Rx Burn and the Line Fire. To assess the landscape changes over time, we tabulated vegetation indices: canopy water content, evaporative stress index, water use efficiency, evapotranspiration, normalized differenced vegetation index, enhanced vegetation index, and soil burn severity. Comparison of the pre-and post-fire landscape conditions revealed more stable vegetation recovery rates for the prescribed burn in a shorter time span. The wildfire had a0.003larger significant decrease in the median Enhanced Vegetation Index overtime when compared to the AOU Rx burn (adjusted R² = 0.51, p-value < 0.05**). Our evidence indicated the AOU Rx Burn may have served as a natural break and protected the nearby urban area from the Line Fire flames.