Reducing Wildfire Risk with Vegetation Management
Find out how Marin Wildfire is implementing fuels reduction projects across the county to reduce wildfire hazard and improve biodiversity.
What is a Fuels Reduction Project?
Fuels reduction projects (sometimes called Shaded Fuel Breaks or Fuel Reduction Zones) reduce the intensity and speed of a potential wildfire by removing hazardous, dead, and invasive plants that burn aggressively. In the event of a wildfire, this gives residents more time to evacuate, makes homes safer, and makes it easier and safer for firefighters to fight the fire.
In addition to reducing fire risk, these projects also improve ecological health by removing invasive shrubs and trees and reducing competition with healthy trees and plants.
Slide the bar on the right side-to-side to see what a section of the Greater Ross Valley Shaded Fuel Break looked like before and after fuels reduction work took place.
Where are these Projects?
Marin Wildfire works with local fire officials, community leaders, elected officials, and other experts to plan projects in the "Wildland-Urban-Interface," where homes and the wildlands meet. This helps prioritize the riskiest areas, while also protecting the whole community from an approaching fire.
Marin Wildfire implements a "house-out" approach. This means prioritizing work at homes, then yards, and roadways critical for evacuations. Vegetation management for fuel reduction generally targets the edges of communities, between homes and wildlands.
Vegetation treatments take into consideration many factors. This means that treatments near one home may look different than treatments next to another, as project managers must consider risk, vegetation type, sensitive plants and animals, slope, access, landowner preferences, and other factors. However, fire risk reduction is always the highest priority, and Marin Wildfire works with each landowner within a project area to create a plan to reduce risk.
Check out approved, completed, and in-progress projects in this interactive map, or use the search icon to search for projects near you. Note that this map includes only "core" vegetation management projects funded by Measure C and does not show every project undertaken by agencies or organizations in Marin County.
Coordination and Collaboration
Marin Wildfire believes that, because a wildfire won't stop at jurisdictional or political boundaries, neither should we. By working with our 17 member agencies, every land managment agency in Marin, and thousands of homeowners across the county, we can create truly cross-jursidictional projects that address risk at the regional level. We also partner with agencies like the Marin County Parks and CALFIRE to leverage other sources of funding to make our work go further.
Marin Wildfire's 17 member agencies
Putting it All Together
Marin Wildfire takes a hollistic approach to preventing a catastrophic wildfire in Marin, not only through vegetation management but a host of other programs and community partnerships. There's no single solution to the wildfire crisis, so Marin Wildfire works to implement a wide variety of solutions through community organizations, local governments, and resident assistance.
Marin Wildfire has conducted over 100,000 defensible space evaulations of homes, distributes $900,000 in grants and direct assistance every year, provides free chipping and hauling of vegetation for all Marin residents, and improves alerts, detections, and evacuations for wildfires across the county.
Working with our partners at Fire Safe Marin, we help create world-class public education campaigns reaching hundreds of thousands of people a year, through social media channels, community ambassadors, ad campaigns, and much more. These camapigns empower Marin residents to take the home hardening, defensible space, and evacuation preparedness actions needed to protect themselves and their communities.
Showing Our Work
Even after fuel reduction projects receive an initial treatment, Marin Wildfire continues to evaluate and monitor projects to ensure that they are properly maintained, and that risk remains low.
We use peer-reviewed, industry standard computer modeling programs to predict fire behavior before and after treatment.
This helps us refine treatments to maximize risk reduction, work with project partners and first responders to communicate the benefits of the projects, and dedicate resources to areas that still have elevated risk.
Honoring Marin Wildfire's commitment to transparency, this data is accesible to the public through an interactive dashboard. Scroll down to learn more about how the data works, then take a look at it for yourself.
An Integrated Process
Marin Wildfire has an integrated, unified data collection process to provide detailed, accurate, and relevant data where it matters most. It includes when and where projects took place, but also information about how those projects reduce fire risk and change how a fire may burn. Check out how the process works:
Data is Collected
On-the-ground project managers draw where they work on a map, and fill out information about vegetation and treatment they're doing. The whole form can be completed on a smartphone in the field.
Data is Hosted by Marin Wildfire
Marin Wildfire collects and host the data throughout the county, and provides a central platform to collaborate with partner agencies and first responders, like the Marin County Fire Department and the State of California.
Data is Analyzed
Marin Wildfire, working with industry partners like Willow Labs and GreenInfo Network, uses the data to predict how a fire will burn in the treated area, and how much risk is reduced through treatment.
Data is Used to Drive Decision Making
By quantifying and mapping risk reduction at the county scale, project planners can identify priority areas for services, create maintaince plans, and make future projects more effective and efficient. Marin Residents can freely access this data, to see exactly how and where Marin WIldfire is reducing risk.
So, What Does it All Mean?
After creating a robust, reliable data collection program, it is clear that Marin Wildfire is significantly reducing wildfire risk for Marin residents through vegetation managment. However, more work needs to be done.
Vegetation management projects don't last forever, and need to be maintained in order to keep risk low as vegetation continues to grow and die. Vegetation management projects are infrastrucutre, and need maintaince in perpituity in order to remain effective.
Vegetation management projects are designed to reduce, not eliminate, an approaching fire. Residents must compliment this work by implementing home hardening and defensible space features in order to stop fire from burning their homes.
Take a Look for Yourself
Have you seen work happening in your neighborhood? Is there a Marin Wildfire sign on your favorite hiking trail? Are there areas where you'd like to see work done? Now, you can see exactly where work has happened, where future work is planned, and how it reduces risk all on one interactive dashboard.
Slide the bar on the right side-to-side to see the results of invasive broom removal in Fairfax.
