National Parks Historic Resources and Fire

Management Plan Analysis for California

INTRODUCTION
Lava Beds
California Bio Mass
The National Parks Historic Resources and Fire Management Plan Analysis for the State of California is a spatial analysis project
produced for visual and statistical analysis of enviromental and biological factors that contribute to, and fuel fires statewide but the focus is within
Redwood

Bio Mass / Forest Density

High
National Parks and Recreational Area boundaries in the state of California.

Lassen Volcanic National Park

Whiskeytown
Lassen Volcanic
Low A five-year fire density and distribution analysis was conducted to analyze fire distrubution and proximinity
National Park Boundaries
to cultural resources listed on The National Register of Historical Places. This data can be used in Park fire management planning
in combination with further analyses to determine furture fire supression needs and funding throughout the stateand allocation to Parks with greater need.
³
²

National Parks & Recreation Areas in California

³
²

PARKNAME Park Code Acres ²²

³³
Point Reyes
Channel Islands CHIS 125544.234888
Golden Gate John Muir Death Valley DEVA 3288513.330958
Yose

Presidio of San Francisco Devils Postpile DEPO 793.775804

mite

Eugene O'Neill EUON 13.584482

Devils Postpile Golden Gate GOGA 67481.162918
John Muir JOMU 345.676236
³
²
Joshua Tree JOTR 792669.976625 ³
²
Kings Canyon KICA 459089.317954
Kings Canyon
Lassen Volcanic LAVO 107560.24963
Manzanar
Lava Beds LABE 46533.992612
De

Pinnacles
Sequoia Manzanar MANZ 813.468863
at

Aspect Anlaysis
h
Va

Mojave MOJA 1589114.328758 ³

²
lle
y

Maximum Downslope of Watersheds

Muir Woods MUWO 576.798692
Pinnacles PINN 27221.613582
Point Reyes PORE 60152.55967
Presidio of San PRSF 1431.134359
Francisco N (0 - 45)
Redwood REDW 109377.753449 ³
²
NE (45 - 90)
³
²
Rosie the Riveter RORI 35.211322
Mojave WWII Home Front
Santa Monica SAMO 154056.958997
Mountains E (90 - 135)
Sequoia SEQU 406528.820702
SE (135 - 180)
Lassen Volcanic NP
Whiskeytown WHIS 42415.85329
Yosemite YOSE 745708.170409

Channel Islands Santa Monica Mountains

Death Valley DEVA 109937.469415 S (180 - 225) Fire Proximinty Analysis
Mojave MOJA 9.354491
Fire 1km centroid Historic Resources Buffer

µ
Joshua Tree
SW (225 - 270)
2006 .5 mile
Lassen Volcanic Historic Resources W (270 - 315) 2007 1 mile
2008
Name
NW (315 - 0) 3 miles

È
Drakesbad Guest

2009
Ranch
Warner Valley
National Park Boundaries 5 miles
2010
0 25 50 100 150 200 Ranger Station 0 2.5 5 10 Miles
Miles

³ Historic Resources on NRHP

Horseshoe Lake

2011 ²
Ranger Station
Summit Lake Ranger
Station
Lassen Volcanic
National Park

Lassen 5 Year Fire Count

Highway Historic
District

DATA
Manzanita Lake
Naturalist's Services Page 1 of 1
Historic District
Loomis Vistor
Center, Bldg. 43
200
The data used for geoprocessing in this analysis began with extensive data Nobles Emigrant
Trail

mining to gather both raster and vector data. NPS provided data as a 150
Prospect Peak Fire
Lookout

KLM file for properties listed on in the National Register for Historic Palces. Count
The KLM file was converted into an ESRI point shapefile. Yosemite NP Historic Resources 100
Name

NPS also provided vector ESRI shapefiles for vegetation type for 50
Acting
Superintendent's
Headquarters

Yosemite NP. Ahwahnee Hotel

Camp 4
0
[0.; 0.5) [1.; 1.5) [3.; 3.5) [4.5; 5.]
Camp Curry Historic

The California DEMs were provided by USGS National Elevation Dataset (NED)
District
Crane Flat Fire

at a spatial resolutions of 1 arc-second (roughly 30 meters) for each DEM. N Buffer Zones by Mile
Lookout

3
Glacier Point
Trailside Museum
Great Sierra Mine

The USDA Forest Service fire data is MODIS fire detection data for years
Historic Site

NW NE
Yosemite National Park
Great Sierra Wagon
Road

2006-11 and are Terra and Aqua MODIS fire and thermal anomalies data from Hodgdon Homestead
Cabin

the official NASA MCD14ML product, Collection 5, Version 1. These data are Jorgenson, Chris,
Studio

provided as the centroids of the 1km fire detections. GIS data provided in
W E
Le Conte Memorial
Lodge

ESRI shapefile Mariposa Grove

Museum
McCauley and Meyer
Barns
Page 1 of 1
McCauley Cabin

5 Year Kernal Density McGurk Cabin

SW SE
Fire Analysis
Merced Grove
Ranger Station
Parsons Memorial
5-yr Fire Density
S
Lodge
Rangers' Club
All National Parks in State Soda Springs Cabin
High Tuolumne Meadows
Tuolumne Meadows
Ranger Stations and
Low Comfort Stations

Bio Mass / Forest Density

Wawona Covered
Bridge
Wawona Hotel and
High Pavilion
Yosemite
Transportation
Company Office
Yosemite Valley
Low Yosemite Valley
Bridges
National Park Boundaries Yosemite Valley
Chapel

RESULTS
Yosemite Village
Historic District Page 1 of 2

The maps produced for the purpose of spatially analyzing historical fire date for years 2006 to the first half of 2011 within the National Parks and
National Recreational Areas in the State of California in order to assess protential fire and post-fire damage to historical resources listed on the National Register
of Historic Places yielded valuable data for archaeologists and cultural resource managers at Lassen Volcanic National Park and Yosemite National Park. Fire data
was quantified by distance from a resource listed on the National Register of Historic Places and displayed graphically on the map. Yosemite NP Fire
The data can be used for future budgetary purposes and for cultural resource planning such as post-fire site stablization; site monitoring and Proximity Analysis
Fire 1km centroid
cultural resource rehabilitation.
2006

CONCLUSIONS
2007
2008
2009
The data and spatial analysis presented on the map visually expresses various factors that contirbute to fires with the National Parks and Recreational Areas 2010
of California. Factors such as bio mass/ forest density, slope, aspect and watersheds all contribute to intensity and speed of fires. 2011
Additional data such as vegetation types and annual precipitation would also be useful in fire perdiction & planning for park management and analysis. Historic Resources Buffer
.5 mile
While the results produced through analyzing the location of historic resources and origin of thermal anomalies (fire data) are useful, 1 mile

the data does not express the actual extent of each fire, only a centroid for fires at least 1km in size. 3 miles
5 miles
Therefore, the data provides a minimum fire size based on infrared satellite remote sensing

METHODS
but does not providea maximum extent of impact. For the purpose of archeological assessment, a post-fire field survey would need to be
conduced to confirm the impact of the fires and
È 0
²
³ Historic
2.5 5
Resouces on NRHP
10 Miles

fire suppression on historical resources listed on the National Register of Historical Places.

The geoprocessing methods used for this analysis began with standardizing Yosemite 5 Year Fire Count
a coordinate reference system. The National Parks Boundaries shapefile
coordinate reference system is GCS_North_American_1983 (with no projection). 700
NOAA's shapefiles for lakes and rivers uses the same reference. The data obtained 600
from NPS for Places listed on the National Register of Historic Places 500
uses GCS_WGS_1984. All small scale maps are in GCS_North_American_1983 Count
400
and the data for larger scale maps was projected in UTM_NAD_1983_zone_11N. 300
Most data was on a national level and had to be selected and clipped to
200
the state of California with further selection and clipping for the individual parks units. 100
0
Vector spatial analysis included overlay methods such as union and intersect. [0.; 0.5) [1.; 1.5) [3.; 3.5) [4.5; 5.]
Extensive feature manipulations such as select and append were methods used Buffer zones by mile
to dervie data form these large datasets. Buffer and intersect was
also used in the spatial analysis of fire proximity to historic resources
listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Raster data analysis & terrain mapping utilized USGS 30-m DEMs for California.
Hillshade, Aspect and Slope data was created (slope data was not utilized in the final
analyses) The 5-yr merged fire vector point data was converted to raster for
entire state and a kernel density analysis was created.

Map Created By: Janelle Harrison

Date Produced: 05/17/2011
Geographic Coordinate System: North American 1983
Projection: UTM NAD83 Zone 11N
Date Sources:
Lassen Volcanic National Park, Warner Valley Ranger Residence,
Mineral vicinity, Tehama, CA