We had a 800-acre fire here on the Wasatch Front last month and I had a chance to map it. When I sent the BARC layer to my contact on the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache NF, he reviewed it and provided some feedback that reversed what I had mapped. In particular, he said he would have basically reversed my severity layer. In other words, the "high severity" areas in my map weren't what he considered a risk, and large chunks of "low severity" in my map were actually of interest to him and posed an erosion risk. The satellite image I used is linked here.
I decided to take the opportunity to make a field visit this week since the burn scar is about 15 miles from my house. The fire area is basically in the SE corner of the Salt Lake Valley on very steep terrain. We met one of the BAER implementation leaders and he showed us around. The team is doing some treatments to hopefully stabilize some of the hillslope, an important step considering the values at risk immediately below the burn scar.
Me and Jenn Lecker (co-worker) on the burn scar.
In this picture, you can see the Draper LDS Temple surround by these large homes. Most the houses in the area are very large and some are directly in the "line of sight" of potential mudslides or debris flows. The burn scar is visible in this picture, too.
30 or so pictures I took are linked on my online web album.
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