Assets At Risk Priority Area Identification

Identification of Priority Areas for the CAL FIRE Prop. 40 Fuels Treatment Program Based on Watershed Assets.

Areas of Watershed Based Assets at Risk were built from statewide data sets describing Assets at Risk (AAR) used in the California Fire Plan. These data are designed to describe assets that have the potential to be adversely impacted by wildfire, and hence can be used to guide pre-fire planning for projects designed to reduce costs and losses from wildfire. AAR data are aggregated to "quad81st" cells that are roughly 450 acres in size. CAL FIRE's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) is currently exploring the possibility of significantly reducing the cell size for AAR to better meet local planning needs.

For this analysis, five watershed-related AARs were used to generate composite asset scores, then the top 30% of all statewide cell scores were included as "key" watershed areas. The top 5% of the total distribution are labeled " High" and the next 25% are labeled "Moderate" on the map.

The five variables used were:

• municipal water supply
• water storage
• wild and scenic river status
• hydroelectric power generation
• post-fire erosion potential (based on the expected amount of surface erosion (tons/acre) generated in the first winter season following wildfire, and is a function of expected changed in vegetation cover resulting from wildfire, as well as terrain, soil, and weather characteristics).