Characterizing the January 2025 wildfires in Southern California using multiplatform satellite observations and landscape metrics

In January 2025, major fires affected the Los Angeles (California, U.S.A.) metropolitan area due to gusty winds and dry conditions. The Palisades and Eaton fires, which started on 7 January, destroyed about 14,000 structures, caused more than twenty fatalities, and burned large areas, followed by the Hughes fire that started on 22 January. In this paper, we investigate those fire events using a mixed approach that combines satellite-derived information from different sensors and landscape metrics. While the Palisades and Hughes fires were detected a few minutes after ignition using GOES-R Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) data, the Eaton fire was promptly identified thanks to the more favourable night-time conditions. The burned area estimates show that the Palisades fire, which was the most intense in terms of fire radiative power, affected the widest area (about 89 km²), with nearly 70% of Southern California dry–mesic chaparral burned. The Eaton fire extended over 48.3 km², while Hughes fire had the smallest extent (40.3 km²), despite a faster spatio-temporal evolution. These results highlight the importance of multiplatform satellite observations for monitoring severe wildfire events and show how landscape metrics can reveal ecological patterns of burned areas, improving our understanding of fire dynamics and land-use conditions favouring fire spread.