Title
Scotts Fire Analysis - A Walk on the Moonscape

Author Information
Tyler Camp
American River College
Geography 350: Data Acquisition in GIS
Fall, 2022

Abstract
The main focus of this project is to understand how much vegetation was lost as a result of the Scotts Fire on Cow Mountain. For this effort vegetation shall be defined as all trees, shrubs, grass, and other plant life that may exist within the fire perimeter.

Introduction
High temperature. Dense and dead vegetation. An outdoor environment ripe with oxygen. These are the perfect conditions for a fire to occur. Unfortunately, this has been the case for over a decade here in California. Fire response must be just as quick and brutal as the fire itself. I was a firefighter on this incident. Seeing the damage the fire caused first hand I am curious to see what the actual loss of vegetation acreage is.

Background
The Scotts fire occurred in September of 2012. Located on Cow Mountain between Ukiah and Clear Lake, it began on the seventh and was contained a short week later on the fourteenth. 30 engines, 8 water tenders, 1 dozer, 504 personnel and 15 fire crews were assigned to this fire. More information available on the CALFIRE Incident page.

Method
Utilizing imagery datasets from USGS I was able to compare and contrast vegetation loss between them. I was fortunate enough to be able to acquire imagery from just before and right after the fire. After processing my images, I then clipped the area of interest to the NIFC fire perimeter and performed supervised image classification. The largest challenge for this project was performing the classification. I initially tried to use a much larger clip and unsupervised classification. This resulted in quite a mess of numbers that were ultimately useless. As quality in equal’s quality out, I had to perform the process again, taking my time to gather supervised samples. The differences in percentages from the classifications allowed me to calculate the acreage lost.

Figure One: Scotts Fire east of Ukiah in True Color
True Color


Figure Two: Scotts Fire in False Color
False Color


Figure Three: Scotts Fire in 543 Band Combination
543


Figure Four: Classification of 9/3 Dataset Pre-incident
9/3



Figure Five: Classification of 9/19 Dataset Post-incident
9/19



Analysis
Even though a result was produced during this effort I feel its accuracy is not quite as precise as I want it. The total acres of 2,752.15 burned is probably higher given the data’s source. Satellite imagery only shows us a bird’s eye view. A tree canopy will cover what’s beneath it, therefor it is impossible to precisely say how much vegetation was actually lost. To obtain a more accurate assessment of total vegetation loss further analysis is required.

Conclusion
As technology continues to improve, I feel that we may see more and more data being captured. Maybe using air attack resources like planes and helicopters for data gathering. There is also a possibility for drone involvement. The more data we can collect increses the opportunity for better results generated from our analysis.

Data Sources
United States Geological Survey (USGS)
National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC)
CALFIRE