Soil burn severity map released for August Complex-South area
- Lake County News reports
- Posted On
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Burned Area Emergency Response, or BAER, specialists recently completed their data gathering and verification fieldwork of the August Complex-South burn area.
Across all of its zones, the August Complex was up to 1,028,601 acres burned and 75 percent contained as of Sunday night, according to the US Forest Service.
Officials said the soil burn severity map has been finalized. Soil burn severity levels are unburned/very low, low, moderate and high.
The map shows that in the August Complex-South fire area, approximately 52 percent of the 521,256 acres analyzed by the BAER team is either unburned/very low (9%) or low (43%) soil burn severity, while 44 percent sustained a moderate soil burn severity, and only 4 percent burned at high soil burn severity.
Of the land assessed, 416,301 acres, or 79.9 percent, is owned by the Forest Service, 90,288 acres or 17.3 percent is held by other owners, 14,660 acres or 2.8 percent is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and 7 acres, less than 1 percent, covers other federal lands.
The BAER post-fire assessment team uses soil burn severity data to identify if there are areas of concern where increased soil erosion, accelerated surface water run-off, and debris flows have the potential to impact human life/safety, property, and critical natural and cultural resources from storm events.
The team consists of Forest Service scientists and specialists who are considering emergency stabilization options for those critical resources on National Forest System lands.
The BAER team shares it analysis and findings with interagency cooperators who work
with private land and business owners to help them prepare for upcoming rain events.
BAER Team Leaders Luke Rutten and Kendal Young said, “The BAER team expects erosion and run-off within the August Complex-South fire area to moderately increase as a result of the fire because 48 percent of the burned area experienced moderate or high soil burn severity.”
In specific areas that experienced moderate to high soil burn severity, there is concern for increased post-fire run-off from steep hillslopes and resultant increases in post-fire soil erosion and debris flows.
The August Complex-South soil burn severity BAER map, shown above, can be downloaded at the interagency August Complex Post-Fire BAER InciWeb site as a JPEG or PDF version under the “maps” tab.