Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo Megafire: 2025 Year in Review
Composite visualization of the Earth Information Center Wildland Fires data dashboard layout and its data assets for the Dragon Bravo Arizona wildfire, July 2025.
Wildland fires pose significant threats to ecosystems, property, and human lives. Leveraging NASA's satellite data, advanced models, visualization capacity and computing power, we analyze fire events, monitor how weather conditions impact fires and how regional air quality affects communities. This analysis of the July 2025 Arizona Dragon Bravo wildfire at the the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park is part of our 2025 Year in Review series, where we look back at several major fire events from 2025.
This analysis follows a similar format to our Daily Visualizations of the Largest Wildfires in the United States , but for this 2025 Year in Review series, we targeted specific wildfires for a specific duration. We examine each wildfire through five data-driven visualization assets:
- Fire Information (format: still image)
- Progression of Fire (format: movie, duration: 30secs)
- GEOS Black Carbon (format: movie, duration: 30secs)
- GEOS Fire Monitor: Regional Air Quality (format: movie, duration: 30secs)
- GEOS Fire Monitor: Regional Weather (format: movie, duration: 30secs)
These visualizations reveal the complex dynamics of wildfire behavior and demonstrate how advanced Earth observation technology helps us understand both immediate threats and long-term environmental impacts. The July 2025 Dragon Bravo megafire at the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, ignited by a lightning strike, exemplifies the critical need for comprehensive wildfire monitoring and analysis.
The visualization assets available in this webpage are designed to be modular and serve multiple purposes. They work together as a comprehensive display on Hyperwall systems (32:9 aspect ratio, 7680x2160 resolution) at Earth Information Center (earth.gov) exhibits, as shown above, or as smaller collections, or each visual asset can be used independently. All assets are freely and openly available for public use, allowing for flexible implementation across different platforms, display sizes and production needs.
Dragon Bravo wildfire Information
Still image displaying essential information about the Dragon Bravo wildfire event, including identification, location, impact area, and operational status.
Progression of Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo wildfire
Visualization showing the Grand Canyon Dragon Fire wildfire progression based on fire perimeter data from the Near Real Time Fire Event Data Suite (FEDS) OGC Application Programming Interface (API).
GEOS Black Carbon from Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo wildfire
Visualization of Black Carbon from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model for the Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo wildfire.
GEOS Fire Monitor: Regional Air Quality
Visualization of regional air quality indicators from NASA's Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model during the Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo wildfire.
GEOS Fire Monitor: Regional Weather Indicators
Visualization of regional weather indicators from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model during the Grand Canyon Dragon Bravo wildfire.
Credits
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office.
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Visualizers
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Zoey N. Armstrong
(Navteca, LLC.)
- Joseph V. Ardizzone (NASA/GSFC)
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Helen-Nicole Kostis
(Science and Technology Corporation)
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Zoey N. Armstrong
(Navteca, LLC.)
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Support
- Ella Kaplan (Global Science and Technology, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Datasets used
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GEOS Atmospheric Model
ID: 665 -
GEOS-FP 2Km Replay (GEOS Forward Processing 2Km Replay)
ID: 1258 -
GEOS-CF (GEOS Composition Forecast)
ID: 1253This dataset can be found at: https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gmao-products/geos-cf/
See all pages that use this dataset -
GEOS-FP
ID: 1196Documentation: Lucchesi, R., 2018: File Specification for GEOS FP. GMAO Office Note No. 4 (Version 1.2), 61 pp, available from https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/pubs/docs/Lucchesi1203.pdf
This dataset can be found at: https://fluid.nccs.nasa.gov/weather/
See all pages that use this dataset -
FEDS (Fire Events Data Suite) [NOAA-20 and SUOMI-NPP: VIIRS]
ID: 1247Credit: Tempest McCabe, Douglas Morton, Melanie Follette-Cook, Elijah Orland, Zeb Becker, Yang Chen, Rebecca Scholten, Greg Corradini, Julia Signel, Alexey Shiklomanov, Kateria Sheronin, and Jim Randerson
This dataset can be found at: https://earth-information-system.github.io/fireatlas/docs/nrt.html
See all pages that use this dataset -
FEDS OGC API
ID: 1254This dataset can be found at: https://earth-information-system.github.io/fireatlas/docs/nrt.html
See all pages that use this dataset -
QFED (Quick Fire Emissions Dataset) [MODIS]
ID: 1255This dataset can be found at: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20180005253
See all pages that use this dataset -
IRWIN (Integrated Reporting of Wildfire Information)
ID: 1257This dataset can be found at: https://www.wildfire.gov/application/irwin-integrated-reporting-wildfire-information
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used on this page, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related
- ID: 5597
- ID: 5557
Release date
This page was originally published on Wednesday, December 31, 2025.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, December 30, 2025 at 5:55 PM EST.