The Station fire occurred in Los Angeles County, California in the 2009. The Station fire was the largest and deadliest of the 2009 California wildfires, burning over 160,000 acres and killing two firefighters (2009 California Wildfires). The Station fire burned from August through October 2009, causing huge amounts of damages to property in Los Angeles (2009 California Wildfires). The Station fire was one of the most devastating fires in recent Los Angeles history (2009 California Wildfires).
The first map is a reference map of the gradual spread of the Station Fire. The map includes fire spreads from August-September 2009. The shapefiles for the fires spreads were gathered from http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire/. This reference map clearly shows that the Station fire rapidly spread throughout Los Angeles county. The base map for this map was taken from default acrgis basemaps.
The second map in this post is a thematic map showing how the fire station perimeters relate to the topography. The thematic map shows that the fire seemed to be confined by the topography. The fire seems to favor traveling downhill. In many places the fire reaches a valley floor, but doesn’t proceed to move up the other side of the valley. It appears that the fire begins on the ridges of the mountains and travels downhill into the valleys. The DEM data for this map was taken from the USGS Seamless site. The same shapefiles from the reference map were used to show fire spread.
The combination of these two maps is helpful in the study of the Station fire. The maps show that as the fire progressed, its perimeter spread very rapidly. The fire tended to start off on the higher elevations of ridges, then travel downhill into valleys. The maps help show that the fire’s spread patterns are strongly controlled by topography.
This was a very enlightening project. The skills we learned this quarter were put to use to create our own maps for the Station fire. The maps produced are very helpful in illustrating the spatial and temporal data associated with the fire. This shows just how useful GIS can be. We were able to take fire spread data and overly it on a topographic map to show how they relate spatially. The maps produced are extremely helpful in studying the fire’s behavior.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2009 California Wildfires. 2009. Wikipedia
Base Map for Los Angeles County. ArcGIS default basemaps.
DEM for Los Angeles County. USGS Seamless Website. 2011 <http://seamless.usgs.gov/>
Station Fire Perimeters. 2009. <http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire/>
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