We took 2010 census block-level populations, combined with Cal Fire’s “Fire Hazard Severity Zone” maps, and aggregated those to ZIP codes, then applied more current population estimates. Next, we spatially joined those areas with the fire risk map. That provided a current population risk bre...
Three interviewees from adopting cities stated they had no choice in map adoption. One explained, “We chose to follow the law.” Another said, “There was no adoption of fire hazard severity zone maps for Local Responsibility Areas.” Interviewees described a process of receiving maps from ...
“There’s a lot of Paradises out there,” said Max Moritz, a fire specialist at UC Santa Barbara. All told, more than 2.7 million Californians live in very high fire hazard severity zones, from trailers off quiet dirt roads in the forest to mansions in the state’s largest cities, acc...
Post-wildfire debris flows typically occur in steep terrain that has been burned at moderate to high severity. These fast-moving flows of water, sediment (typically >50% sediment by volume), and debris can be extremely destructive. They can damage roads and infrastructure, wash away vehicles, f...
A KQED investigation has found that wildfire is a significant hazard at 35% of these facilities, in the wildland-urban interface, in state-designated fire hazard severity zones, or both.A gray wave is crashing on California. The Golden State is aging faster than the rest of the country. In...
Understanding pre-1850s fire history and its effect on forest structure can provide insights useful for fire managers in developing plans to moderate fire hazards in the face of forecasted climate change. While climate clearly plays a substantial role in
conditions to align: enough precipitation to dampen the risk of the fire escaping control, but not so much that the land was too wet to burn. Also, enough sun and heat to dry the ground even through the heavy canopy, but not so much that dry plants would stoke a high-severity fire. ...
This model is further calibrated to identify the geographic extent for applying post-fire hazard assessment models. Aerial photographs were used to map locations of post-fire debris-flow erosion and deposition in the San Gabriel Mountains. Terrain, burn severity, and soil characteristics expected to ...
(producing the thunderstorms). This is illustrated by the map below, which shows moisture around 10,000 ft (700 hPa pressure level) for 5 AM on August 17th. The moisture levels getting into California were as much as 4-5 standard deviations from the normal. Trust me…this is very, ver...
the human-caused wildfires were further classified to generate a more detailed spatial density distribution map. The anthropogenic causes were subdivided by CAL FIRE into 15 types. The spatial distribution of wildfires with different causes are shown in the supplementary figures (Supplementary Fig. 1)...