Rim Fire: soil severity and vegetation severity

A U.S. Forest Service wildland fire ecologist that the Associated Press quoted as describing the area burned in the 250,000-acre Rim Fire in and near Yosemite National Park as “nuked” stirred up some controversy with his quoted remarks. It is difficult to use a subjective one-word description to sum up the varied fire effects on a huge fire that burned for weeks under an assortment of weather, vegetation, and topography conditions.

Most of the early assessments of burn severity on a large fire are derived from multiple sensors on satellites that are orbiting hundreds of miles above the earth. Using data from individual sensors, or combining information from multiple sensors, scientists can compare recent data with historical records to produce maps highlighting their area of interest. Two of the most common burn severity maps you will see are vegetation and soil severity.

The Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team assigned to the Rim Fire has publicized their version, soil burn severity maps which specifically focus on severity to soils and watersheds. The primary objective of the BAER team is to identify imminent post-wildfire threats to human life, safety, property, and critical natural or cultural resources and to take immediate actions to implement emergency stabilization measures before the first major storms. Their map of September 13 shows approximately 56% of the fire is either unburned or received a low-severity burn, 37% sustained a burn of a moderate severity, and approximately 7% burned at high severity.

The September 17, 2013 Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire (RAVG) map produced by the USFS’ Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC) analyzed vegetation severity produced by a change detection process using two Landsat Thematic Mapper images captured before and after the fire. They came up with very different numbers: 35% unchanged or low-severity, 27% moderate severity, and 38% high severity.

The maps from the two organizations are below. Larger versions can be seen HERE and HERE. Also included in the gallery are photos showing two areas burned in the fire, and a photo taken two hours after the fire started.

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Rim fire burn area: “nuked” or not?

The Associated Press, in an article written by Tracie Cone, quotes Jay Miller, a U.S. Forest Service “Fire ecologist”, as saying the area burned by the Rim Fire in California has been “nuked” and “everything is dead”.

…The fire has consumed about 400 square miles, and within that footprint are a solid 60 square miles that burned so intensely that everything is dead, researchers said.

“In other words, it’s nuked,” said Jay Miller, senior wildland fire ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “If you asked most of the fire ecologists working in the Sierra Nevada, they would call this unprecedented.”

Smaller pockets inside the fire’s footprint also burned hot enough to wipe out trees and other vegetation.

In total, Miller estimates that almost 40 percent of the area inside the fire’s boundary is nothing but charred land. Other areas that burned left trees scarred but alive.

The excerpt below was written by the Rim Fire Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team which paints a very different picture than the one above from the Associated Press and Mr. Miller.

SONORA CA (September 16, 2013) – The BAER team completed the soil burn severity map for the Rim Fire. The map using burned acres as of September 13 shows that approximately 56% of the 254 926 acres within the Rim fire perimeter are either unburned or received a low-severity burn 37% sustained a burn of a moderate severity and approximately 7% burned at a high severity.

BAER specialists concluded that the amount of high severity burn is fairly low given time of year and comparison to other fires. The moderate and low severity burned areas are fairly high for similar reasons. These values are for the entire burn area of the Rim Fire. The soil burn severity BAER map can be downloaded at the “Rim Post-Fire BAER” InciWeb site as JPEG or PDF.

Near the end of the AP article there is a different point of view from Mr. Miller’s”

“It really burned here much like a prescribed fire would to a large degree because of land management practices,” Holbeck said. “Fire plays a natural part of that system. It can’t all be old growth forests, though Yosemite holds some of the oldest trees in the Sierra.”

Rim Fire, east side of Bourland drainage, USFS photo by Louis Haynes
Undated photo of the Rim Fire, east side of Bourland drainage. USFS photo by Louis Haynes from the BAER team Inciweb website.

The Rim Fire, which started August 17, has burned 256,895 acres in and near Yosemite National Park in California and is listed at 84 percent contained. It still has 1,371 personnel assigned.

Our take on the Associated Press article

We don’t know if Tracie Cone accurately quoted USFS “Fire Ecologist” Jay Miller, but if so, it is inconceivable that Mr. Miller’s description of the burn severity would appear so starkly in contrast to that presented by the BAER team. It would also be interesting to know if Mr. Miller was on the BAER team or if he has been on the ground at the Rim Fire. We are not aware of any reputable, experienced wildland fire manager or fire scientist who would ever use the terms “nuked” or “everything is dead” to describe the effects found on a very large fire that burned for weeks in various weather, topography, and vegetation conditions.

Based on the AP article and the reports from the BAER team, we have little confidence in the accuracy of the information attributed to Mr. Miller that was presented by the Associated Press.

A call to Mr. Miller, who is listed in the USFS directory as a Remote Sensing Specialist, was not immediately returned. We also called the Rim Fire incident Management Team for a comment on the article, and spokesperson Sean Collins told us it was their policy to not comment on the “opinions” of others in regard to the burn severity.

(UPDATE September 23, 2013: more information about different kinds of maps showing vegetation and soil severity.)

Wildfire briefing, September 5, 2013

Investigators determine cause of Rim Fire

Investigators from the U.S. Forest Service and the Tuolumne County District Attorney’s Office have determined that the 237,000-acre Rim Fire in central California began when a hunter allowed an illegal fire to escape. Contrary to speculation earlier by Todd McNeal, fire chief in Twain Harte, there is no indication the hunter was involved with illegal marijuana cultivation and no marijuana cultivation sites were located near the origin of the fire.

Animation of the spread of the Rim Fire

An animation of the spread of the Rim Fire will entertain you for a few minutes. It is fascinating to watch as the fire spreads, burnouts are completed, and sections of the fire become smaller as data collected during GPS helicopter flights around the fire are later corrected by infrared mapping.

Dozer operator injured in rollover

The Idaho Statesman reported that a dozer operator was seriously injured Monday during a rollover while he was constructing a helispot on the Raft Fire, part of the Weiser Complex. Timothy Harrison, 55, was hospitalized in critical condition. The U.S. Forest Service is conducting an investigation into the accident.

Arizona Governor to appeal federal aid for Yarnell Hill Fire

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer reportedly plans to appeal the decision by FEMA which declined to provide federal aid for the Yarnell Hill Fire. FEMA’s rationale was that few of the homeowners who lost their residences in the fire did not have insurance. On June 30, 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were killed on the fire.

 

Thanks go out to JW

Wildfire briefing, September 1, 2013

Rim Fire becomes fourth largest in California history

Yosemite Valley's Half Dome obscured by smoke
Yosemite Valley’s Half Dome, normally seen in this view, was obscured by smoke at 8:36 a.m. September 1, 2013

Our main article about the Rim Fire is updated daily but here are a few recent facts about the fire. On Saturday it continued to grow, adding another 3,000 acres to become at 222,77 acres the fourth largest fire in California history. Winds that shifted to come out of the west over the last two days have blown smoke into downtown Yosemite National Park, into the heavily visited Yosemite Valley. Compare these two photos of the valley; the one above was taken Sunday morning by a web cam, and the photo below we took on a day when the air was much cleaner. The fire is still eight to ten miles away from Yosemite Valley.

Yosemite Valley January, 1997
Yosemite Valley January, 1997, a few days after a flood caused major damage to National Park Service facilities in the valley. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

The 5,115 personnel assigned to the fire are fighting it by constructing direct fireline along the fire’s edge, and by indirect methods including burning out the fuel ahead of the fire. The smoke has limited the use of air tankers and helicopters for the last two days.

According to the Daily Telegraph, the fire may have been caused by activities at an illegal marijuana farm.

“We don’t know the exact cause,” Todd McNeal, fire chief in Twain Harte, a town that has been in the path of the flames, said on Friday. But he told a community meeting that it was “highly suspect that there might have been some sort of illicit grove, a marijuana-grow-type thing.”

“We know it’s human caused. There was no lightning in the area,” he said.

LA Times article about the Rim Fire

Julie Cart, who with Bettina Boxall wrote a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles in 2008 about wildfires for the Los Angeles Times, has a new article about the Rim Fire. She mentions how firefighting policy differs between the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service, but greatly over-simplifies to the point of distortion the concept of “fire use” fires which are not aggressively and immediately suppressed.

Reuters: how budgets affect fires

Reuters has an article about how federal budgets may be contributing to the occurrence of larger fires by reducing the number of fuel treatment projects and prescribed fires. They have a quote from Jonathan B. Jarvis, the Director of the National Park Service:

Part of the problem, experts and many fire officials say, is that funding has been low for the controlled burns and forest-thinning work that makes it harder for a wildfire to spread.

“We’ve got to invest up front in terms of controlling and managing these fires,” said Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service from his smoke-filled post in Yosemite National Park. “Just waiting for the big fire and then throwing everything you’ve got at it makes no sense.”

In recent years, Jarvis said, the trend has been to shift money from fire prevention to firefighting.

Montana Supreme Court will decide case about firefighting strategy

The Montana Supreme Court will make a decision by November that could have an effect on how firefighters select a strategy for suppressing a fire. A Montana rancher who said firefighters’ backfires ruined his ranch won a suit against the state of Montana in 2012 which is being appealed to the Supreme Court. A jury awarded Fred and Joan Weaver $730,000 in a trial over the strategy and tactics that were used on the Ryan Gulch fire in 2000 – $150,000 was for the loss of timber, $200,000 for rehabilitation of pasture land, and the balance was for the mental suffering and anguish of seeing their ranch threatened by the fire. About 900 acres of the Weaver’s land burned during the fire.

The heart of the Weavers’ case was their contention that firefighters who usually fought fire in the flat, wet southeast United States used poor judgement in selecting and implementing an indirect strategy of backfiring, rather than constructing direct fireline on the edge of the fire. In the process, they argued, more land burned than was necessary, including 900 acres of their ranch.

We wrote an analysis of the 2012 court decision last year.

Recent articles at Fire Aviation

Prescott’s Granite Mountain Hotshot crew nearly paid for itself

When the Granite Mountain Hotshots worked on federal fires the terms were established by their contract or agreement with the U.S. Forest Service. The Prescott Fire Department paid the personnel on the crew around $12 an hour according to The Daily Courier, but the department was reimbursed by the federal government at the rate of $39.50 an hour. Below is an excerpt from the article:

In fiscal year 2012, the city estimated that the crew brought in $1,375,191, and had $1,437,444 in operating expenses – for a difference of $62,253.

On June 30 of this year 19 members of the crew were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire near Prescott, Arizona. A controversy is brewing in Prescott and the state of Arizona about the differences in compensation for the survivors of the seasonal and permanent firefighters on the crew.

It is not unusual for firefighting resources that are contracted to the federal government through local fire departments to be compensated at rates far higher than those at which federal firefighters are paid.

 

Thanks go out to Dick

Time lapse video of Rim Fire

This video includes time lapse views from Yosemite National Park of the Rim Fire, which has burned 201,894 acres. If you’re at work, turn down the volume on your speakers —  the music at the beginning is especially loud and annoying.

The video was compiled by Yosemite National Park. They describe it like this:

The first part of this video is from the Crane Flat Helibase. The fire is currently burning in wilderness and is not immediately threatening visitors or employees. The second half of the video is from Glacier Point, showing Yosemite Valley, and how little the smoke from the fire has impacted the Valley.

Our main article about the Rim Fire at Yosemite National Park is updated daily with maps and current information.

MAFFS air tankers assist crew in trouble

A TV station in Sacramento, California has a story about Military MAFFS C-130 air tankers making some retardant drops to assist a hand crew that was in a difficult situation on the RIM fire recently.

I am intrigued by the “common operating picture” that was mentioned by the national guard gentleman.

Our main article about the Rim Fire at Yosemite National Park is updated daily with maps and current information.