A Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Team is being established to begin a burned area assessment of the Grapevine wildfire on the Verde Ranger District. Preliminary evaluation has found no immediate or downstream values at risk, including the community of Whitehorse.
BAER teams consist of scientists and specialists including hydrologists, geologists, soil scientists, engineers, botanists, biologists, archaeologists, and geographic information specialists. The teams collect data during ground surveys and complete GIS and modeling to evaluate the post-fire risks. The first step in the BAER assessment process is taking satellite imagery and data collected during ground surveys to produce a soil burn severity map. The soil burn severity provides the baseline information to determine changed watershed conditions for assessing potential watershed impacts from wildfires, such as flooding and unstable soils. This information is then compiled to determine if post fire emergency conditions are present.
