Lab Practical Test: Post-Fire Analysis for the Santa Rosa Fire

Disclaimer: this is based on real events and GIS activities defined by spatial analysts who work with fire but is a contrived assignment.

Santa Rosa Fire (cnn.com)

The Santa Rosa fire destroyed a large portion of the city.  Government agencies are now in need of information on the fire and who it effected to make plans for compensation and restoration.

Your assignment, as a group, is to create the following deliverables:

• A report:
  • The report should include:
    • Total area burned
    • Area of burn for each type of land with as much detail as possible (City, Residential, State/Fed/Private, Wilderness, FS, parks, etc.)
    • Map with the area of burn symbolized by land cover type with a legend
    • Stream/river systems that were effected
    • Length of streams impacted
    • Watersheds effected with area and percent burned
    • Available access (roads)
    • Length of roads
    • Some pictures
    • A table with the number of hectares by land cover using NLCD codes
    • What ever other information you feel is appropriate
  • The report should be an MS-Word file format with the sections:
    • Cover page
      • Title
      • Date
      • List of authors (everyone in class)
    • Abstract
    • Introduction/Background
    • Methods
      • Description of the site
      • Flow charts for the main processing steps
    • Results
      • Appropriate maps(s)
    • Conclusion
    • Acknowledgments
    • Citations
• A web site:
  • The target audience for the web site is government agencies involved in post-fire work and the public
  • The web site should include:
    • Information on the fire with maps of the extent of the fire
    • Summary results of the analysis
    • Links to web sites with information and data (someone should have a folder that you can put the data sets into that you can link to)
    • A copy of the report
• Data sets:
  • Fire extent
  • Available roads
  • Stream and rivers
  • Watersheds

• Extra Credit:

  • Add information on the critical habitat for threatened and endangered species that might effected by the fire and associated human activities.
  • Add information on the areas that are susceptible to slides (i.e. high slope areas).

You can use any sources of information that are not classified but please cite all sources.

Learning Outcomes

• Exercise and demonstrate skills acquired thus far in GIS
• Work in a team environment