Fire Mapping

Discussion

This project continues to show how GIS can be used to allieviate and determine hazards areas like the Station Fire. It address the relationship between slope and fuels to assess how vulnerable an area is to fire. To begin creating my own fire assement maps I downloaded perimeter, DEM, vegetation, and other supplimental data such as roads and county shapfiles. The DEM data was downloaded via the USGS Seamless Server, and the U.S Forest Service provided the vegetation data. Most of the supplemental data was obtained from the Census Tiger Line Shapefiles.

After downloading the data, I created the hill shade and the slope from the DEM file I downloaded. I then proceeded to convert the vegetation data into raster format and reclassify it with similar classifications as table 2 in the tutorial. Shrub, Conifer, and Mixed wood were the highest risk to fire, with Urban, agriculture, and barren land being the least suseptible to fire. This is shown in the Fuel Risk map shown in the bottom right hand corner of “Fire Assements Maps for the Station Fire and Surrounding Areas”. To create the Slope/Fuel Risk map I used the raster caluclator to add the fuel risk to the percent slope. This map shows that as the slope increase so does the risk of fire, and since the flat ground is usually asscoiated with a populated area with no trees, vegetation tends to increase with slope as well.

One problem I encoutered with this map was initally aquiring all the data, putting it in one place, and sorting through it to see what is needed. Another problem I ran into was deciding exactly what to portray through the map, the project was vague and therefore we could go in any direction we wanted. My goal was to make a map that was simple but not boring, complex but not overwhelming.Finally, one technical problem I had was getting the slope percent to work, even though I kept choosing the percent button within the interface it kept spitting up decimal numbers,I tried many different avenues but kept coming up with the same result.

Through this map and the spatial analyst of GIS we now understand the potential for fire in the Station Fire area. This map and maps like these can help address some of the potential risks that arise in certain areas. Although somewhat frustrating this lab helped me to understand the data in a completely different way.

Fuel Classifications:

Herbacious	1	Light
Shrub	2	Medium
Conifer	3	Medium
Mix	4	Heavy
Hardwood	5	Heavy
Barren, Water, Agriculture, Urban	0	Non-Fuel