Activity: Fire Mapping – Year 8

Quick summary: Students use a fire mapping website to develop an understanding about how burning and seasonal rainfall are related. They use the same web tools as land managers who use this data to assess fire risks and applying for registration for carbon credits. Students use the information from this website to create and annotate a map of a region in the Australian tropical savanna.

Learning intentions:

• Students understand some of the ways humans have influence over landscapes
• Students understand how online mapping tools can be used to manage natural phenomena, such as fires.

21st century skills:

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Content descriptions:

Year 8 Geography: 

• The aesthetic, cultural and spiritual value of landscapes and landforms for people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People (ACHGK049)
• The human causes and effects of landscape degradation (ACHGK051)
• The ways of protecting significant landscapes (ACHGK052)
  
• Evaluate sources for their reliability and usefulness and select, collect and record relevant geographical data and information, using ethical protocols, from appropriate primary and secondary sources (ACHGS056)

Syllabus outcomes: GE4-1, GE4-4, GE4-2, GE4-3, GE4-5. 

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Intercultural Understanding, ICT Capability.

Cross-curriculum priority:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures OI.2.
• Sustainability OI.2, OI.7.

Relevant parts of Year 8 Geography achievement standards: Students explain interconnections within environments and between people and places and explain how they change places and environments. They evaluate a range of primary and secondary sources to locate useful and reliable information and data.

Topic: Cool Burning, Indigenous Education.

Unit of work: Cool Burning – Secondary.

Time required: 60 mins.

Level of teacher scaffolding: High – students will need to become familiar with how the website functions and the colour coding of the maps representing the months in which fires occur.

Resources required:

• Device capable of presenting a website to the class
• Devices for students to access the internet
• Factsheet – How Do Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Peoples Use Fire To Manage Country?
• Factsheet – The Maths And Facts Behind The Savanna
• Student Worksheet – one copy per student.

Related professional development: 

• Teach Indigenous Land Management Using Fire
• Teach Caring for Country Using Fire

Keywords: Fire scars, hotspots, charts, graphs, emissions.

Special thanks to:

Fish River Station, John Daly, Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith, Peter Jacklyn, Peter McConchie, Dr Tommy George, David Claudie, Dale Musgrave, Carolyn George and Victor Steffensen.

Cool Australia would like to acknowledge the support of the Bennelong Foundation in updating these lessons.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum. There is great diversity in histories and cultures among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples throughout Australia. This resource includes investigations into and information about some of them. It has an emphasis, but not an exclusive one, on the histories and cultural practices of the Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory. It is underpinned by consultation with Aboriginal communities in various parts of Australia.