A coordinated regional approach is needed to manage fire fuels and protect local communities, ecosystems, and infrastructure from wildfire. To address this gap, Pepperwood, Tukman Geospatial and the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources founded the open-access Wildfire Fuel Mapper – a free online mapping application that equips residents with the information they need to reduce hazardous fuels that threaten lives and homes, and was initiated in Sonoma County.
The Napa County Wildfire Fuel Mapper was created to help residents, fire safe councils, and other land managers to help to locate and understand fire hazards on their property. The application aggregates fine-scale fuels and fire hazard datasets to deliver information via custom maps and reports. The simple interface helps residents to understand planning and regulatory requirements specific to their location. Formerly available only to Sonoma County residents, the Wildfire Fuel Mapper has recently been expanded to all of Napa County, with funding from Napa Firewise Foundation.
Vegetation management aims to alter the amounts and arrangement of fuels that spread wildfires. These actions have been shown to lead to fewer, smaller, and less damaging fires. The Wildfire Fuel Mapper helps residents and Fire Safe Councils:
- Map vegetation within defensible space zones at the scale of a parcel or a community,
- Provide critical information inputs for collaborative vegetation treatment planning,
- Connect with experts who can advance from a plan to implementation.
You can take the next steps to implement a vegetation management plan and, together, we can support our region’s overall resilience to wildfire.
