Fire-Erosion Risk

Step Wise Guide

Pre Wildfire Planning

Where does the highest fire severity overlap with the highest chance of post wildfire erosion?

It is important to identify the locations across a watershed or landscape where the highest fire severity overlaps areas of the highest post fire erosion potential. These locations may be zones of extreme events, threatening water quality and aquatic species in the event of high severity fires.

OPTION 1 (easiest): Wildfire Cascade Tool

Step 1: Go to NetMap's Wildfire Cascade Tool. This tool allows display of predicted wildfire probability and severity (flame length) using data available from Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center (WWETAC). Post fire erosion prediction (surface erosion using the WEPP model) is also available in the tool is based on results from Miller et al. (2011). An analyst can use this tool to quickly search for spatial overlaps of where predicted high fire probability and or severity overlaps various types of erosion potential and where those overlap with sensitive aquatic habitats.

The tool is used to quickly search for the combination of highest fire severity, such as the highest 10% or highest 1% (etc) of fire probability, with the highest 10% or highest 1% (etc) predicted post fire surface erosion.

OPTION 2: Wildfire - Erosion Tool

Step 1: Go to NetMap's Surface Erosion-Veg/Fire tool. The tool applies a spatially explicit version of the WEPP_Disturbed model for four difference scenarios: (1) no fire (surface erosion potential for unburned conditions using mapped vegetation classe), (2) Pre Wildfire (severity only) (surface erosion potential based on the most probable fire severity as predicted by WWETAC FireSim; FireSim predicted flame lengths (fire intensity) are grouped into three severity classes of High, Moderate and Low), (3) Pre Wildfire (burn probability combined with fire severity) (long term erosion regimes (frequency - magnitude distributions) that include both unburned and burned conditions (natural climate) over periods of a couple of hundred years (e.g., long term stochastic sediment budget) and (4) Post Fire ( post-fire erosion (severity) with a user-provided land cover layer that includes actual fire severity values (e.g., as contained within a Burned Area Reflectance Classification [BARC] map)).

For this application, a user would select either scenario #2 or #3; #2 may be most effective since it focuses solely on fire severity. Running the tool can be time consuming and thus the tool should be applied strategically to local areas. Running the tool at the scale of an entire NetMap dataset may take > 24hrs.

To search for the combination of highest fire severity, such as the highest 10% or highest 1% (etc) of fire probability, with the highest 10% or highest 1% (etc) predicted post fire surface erosion, Go To NetMap's Overlap Tool.