My focus in this mini-project is to look into the Station Fire in LA County in August/September 2009, specifically, I want to look at where are communities at risk and how human actions (built of highway and possible accessibility) are involved in the fire.
For the first map, I have downloaded all available station fire perimeters in the months of August and September in 2009. All the fire perimeters overlap somewhat in a concentrated region in LA county, and it is actually away from the built highways. However, in this first map, it is hard to tell where the fires are and why the region is away from highways. The possible question I could ask is why is this region the community suffered from fire? Since the region is away from highways, does it mean the region of fire has low accessibility for firemen to reach? Thus, I have went on to create a second map.
In the second map, I have included layers of data. The first layer is the US base map, marking all the roads and cities in the county. I then confirmed the highway again by adding the data of major US highways. The third layer is the fire parameters in the year of 2009. It confirms with the monthly parameters that I have included in the first map. The purple region inside of the LA County of the year of 2009 fire parameter overlap with the monthly fire parameters in the first map. I then would like to compare it with the data of RMRS wild land fire potential to see if they are consistent. This way, I could see if the area of fire is consistent with the fire potential naturally occurring without other major human actors that could ignite and start the fire. Interestingly, in the layer of the RMRS wild land fire potential, it shows that the area of the fire parameters are in the category of low and moderate. This is very interesting, because base on the previous data given, it is easy to assume that where the fire occurs would be the area of the greatest potential to fire occurrence. One possible explanation to explain this phenomenon is that the area of red color, with very high fire potential West of the cities and the concentrated highways actually has low fire perimeter is that the region is still human accessible. And the LA county puts a lot of efforts to eliminate all the possible occurrence of fire, since one major highway runs through this region. Any fire occurred in the region would be hard to put out, especially in the summer month. And any fire near the highways would means a huge damage and danger to possible human casualty, property loss, traffic shutdown of transportation, and delay in economic activities such as shipping and delivery. Thus, even though the red region West of the concentrated highways and major cities have a great potential of fire, the actually occurrence of fire is low due to human fire control.
Now shifting our focus back to the fire perimeter region in the color of purple. One possible explanation to explain the phenomenon that at the region with comparably lower fire potential occurs the most frequent of fire is the limited accessibility for human and the natural factor of life and vegetation. The area of the purple region, if you zoom in, that is the area of Angeles National Forests. And this proves characteristics of the California fires. Fires in California are usually wildfires tends to happen in the dry summer, due to the Mediterranean climate. Vegetation in California, the species that survive here actually rely on the fire to spread their seeds to start another cycle of life. Thus, in the National Forests where a concentrated vegetation occurs, naturally it makes sense that there are a higher occurrence of fire. Another reason of this is due to the human actors. At the same time we are trying to preserve nature, we have minimizing our interference into the region, such as clearing the vegetation for building major roads that firemen could easily drive in. Thus, when there is fire occurring, it is already easy for the fire to spread out due to the concentration of fire. On top of that, firemen cannot just simply drive in their trucks following the road and starting to put off the fire. To provide another conclusion support, major highways are where cities and population gathers. Firemen could easily access into the area, despite the dense population, because they are able to access and build systems such as fire hydrants on the sides of the road to be prepared for fires. From the information I obtained from inciweb.org, the station fire was the tenth largest fire in California since 1933, and the burning area was 160557 acres. This would be the largest wild fire in the modern Los Angeles County history. Even though the numbers are scary and it sounds like there are a lot of damage due to the fire, there are also natural factors involved in the occurrence.
One last observation is out of my own curiosity, I added the last layer of LA Critical Biological Area on the second map. This once again confirms my previous conclusion, that fire occurs at the natural areas and where human have low accessibility and influence over the region. In the second map, it is clear to see that LA critical biological areas are either in the purple region of fire perimeter or close to the region. Overall, the summer months in 2009 the fire perimeters occurs in the region of Angeles National Fires. The region where naturally the fire would happen, and have little human actors involved in the region where it makes it hard to put down the fire quickly or completely eliminate the fires like we do in the populous areas in the cities.
Reference/Bibliography:
“All Station Fire Perimeters (as of September 2, 07:02)-Complete set.” Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS: Geospatial technology for citizens of Los Angeles County.” September 2, 2009. December 7, 2011.
"RMRS Wildland Fire Potential." ArcGIS Service: Esri. USFS Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Stations. July 8, 2010. December 7, 2011.
"LA Critical Biological Area." ArcGIS Service: Esri. USFS Forest Service Southern California. December 29. 2005. December 7, 2011.
"USA Fire Parameter History 1999-2009 Oct." ArcGIS Service: Esri. December 2009. December 7, 2011.
