Aerial View Maps

I'm creating a GIS map and need help finding the right resources?

I am working on a project for my ArcGIS class. I want to create a map of california showing all previous areas of wildfire. I want to find out if they overlap. I'm thinking about using an aerial image of california and maps of previous wildfires that show their boundaries, but I'm having a hard time finding these sources. Can anyone please tell me where I can look?

Public Comments

1. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/socal_wildfires_oct07.html http://www.calfires.com/ http://www.fire.ca.gov/index.php
2. Try these, the USDA Forest Service's archives of their MODIS Active Fire Mapping program. They're jpg and pdf format, but you can convert them to TIFs or GeoTIFs if you need to. Images are taken every two hours from 1 am to 7 pm every day, so you would have a lot of maps to go through. http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activefiremaps.php?op=archive&rCode=cgb Oh, even better. They have "Fire GIS" data. I think this is EXACTLY what you need. It even includes the shapefiles. http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/gisdata.php