Mitigation Success Story at the Lick Observatory

Located 4,200 feet on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in Santa Clara County, California, the Lick Observatory, founded by James Lick, has been in operation east of San Jose since 1888. It is the world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory in the world.

The Observatory, owned and operated by the University of California, is an active center of astronomical research, open to the public, and is visited by 35,000 visitors annually. From undergraduate students to the most senior and eminent astronomers, the Observatory is also home to several Summer Visitor's programs including lecture series', concert series, and hosts several K-12 teacher workshops.

The video below provides an aerial view of the Observatory in 2013, including the numerous structures on the grounds and the terrain surrounding the Observatory.

 The Great Lick 36-inch Refractor  was built during the years of 1880 through 1888. Located in the larger dome of the Main Observatory building, the Refractor is 57 feet long, 4 feet in diameter, and weighs over 25,000 pounds. The "36-inch" refers to the diameter of the two refracting lenses on the skyward end of the telescope. When completed, the Lick Refractor was the largest refracting telescope in the world. Today, it is the second largest in size compared to the 40-inch Yerkes Observatory Refractor. The Lick Refractor is still used infrequently for research. Currently it is used to observe the separation of orbits of binary stars. Often used as a teaching telescope for university and college astronomy classes, as well as NASA teachers' workshops. The general public may view the heavens through the 36-inch refractor at the Lick Observatory Summer Visitors Program and the Music of the Spheres concert series.

In addition to being home to numerous astronomical discoveries over the last century, the Observatory is also home to countless historical and scientific artifacts including instruments, photographs, log books, drawings, and astronomers studies. This wealth of scientific information and history is just one of the reasons why the wildfire mitigation techniques the Observatory has undertaken are so critically important.

 The Shane Reflector   commissioned in 1959 named after the Lick Observatory Director, C. Donald Shane. For many years, the Shane 3-meter telescope was the second largest reflector in the world. Today, it is used for groundbreaking technology in adaptive optics. The Shane's adaptable 3-foci design allows many kinds of instruments to be used, enabling a large variety of observations and research. The 3-foci design works as follows: the telescope is constructed around a 120-inch (3-meter) primary mirror and light can be focused at three different locations (foci) along the length of the telescope: prime focus, Cassegrain focus, and Coude focus. Designed for maximum versatility, the 3-foci accommodates a variety of instruments for many different types of research.

The Hamilton Echelle Spectrograph now occupies two entire rooms in the Shane dome basement. The Hamilton is a high dispersion instrument, spreading light into an echelle spectrum or ladder like arrangement of approximately 80 bands. Each band represents a precise picture of a small wavelength (color) range. Together the bands create a comprehensive yet highly detailed representation of the observed object. Used by both the Shane Telescope and the Coude Auxiliary Telescope, the Hamilton Echelle Spectrograph is used mostly to study bright objects and is currently used in detecting extrasolar planets, determining chemical composition of stars, and other research.

 The Nickel telescope  was built in 1979 and is used in the optical search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The 40-inch Nickel Reflector is used in astronomical projects that require less light-gathering power than the 120-inch Shane Reflector. University of California graduate students often use the Nickel, which is operated from a computerized control room nearby. The public may both look through the Nickel telescope and see the control room at the Lick Observatory Summer Visitors Program and the Music of Spheres concert series.

 The Katzman Automatic Imagining Telescope (KAIT)  is a 30-inch robotic telescope operated by a computer. Astronomers and telescope technicians have programmed KAIT to look for supernovae every night of the year without the need for human operators. PI Alex Filippenko conceived and designed the KAIT to maximize efficiency in finding supernovae and to facilitate early discovery, so that supernova life cycles could be observed long before reaching maximum brightness. KAIT is named for the Sylvia and Jim Katzman Foundation which donated $50,000 at a critical time during the telescope's development. KAIT observes a preprogrammed list of galaxies, searching for new supernovae. KAIT records the data and compares it with previous data from the area surveyed and if any changes are noted, indicating new supernovae, KAIT automatically emails UC Berkeley Astronomers, who then follow up by making observations of their own to prove or disprove the supernovae event. KAIT alone finds about two supernovae per week.

 Automated Planet Finder (APF)  is the world's first robotic telescope capable of detecting rocky planets that might support life in other solar systems and consists of a meter automated telescope and enclosure and a high resolution spectrograph. The telescope and spectrograph will operate robotically every night and will target a preprogrammed list of nearby stars and observe them every night for months, in search of rocky planets with very low masses, like Earth. The goal of extrasolar planet research is to find nearby planets like Earth that may support life. The spectrograph was deigned by UCO's Steve Vogt and built at UCO's Technical Facilities. The spectrograph uses a large camera, diffraction grating, and prism to break up the starlight into over 200,000 distinct colors and brings all those colors to focus on a CCD (charged coupled device). The spectrograph thus produces a very high resolution digital spectrum of the starlight. The sensitive Levy spectrograph is optimized for speed and radial velocity precision. It will detect velocity changes in each star's movement down to 1 meter per second, equivalent to human walking speed. This change in a star's velocity could indicate that planets are pulling on the star and their gravitational forces. Since the spectrograph detects the smallest possible velocity changes, planets of lowest possible mass can be detected.

Wildfires have been encroaching on the Observatory over the past 50-plus years. The map below documents the number of increased wildfires over time.

The USDA Forest Service interactive webpage provides the ability to view various wildfire risk-related datasets to help communities understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk. You can view the related risks at the Lick Observatory in Santa Clara County below. The three wildfire datasets available are provided:

• Risk to Homes: A measure that integrates wildfire likelihood and intensity with generalized consequences to a home on every pixel. For every place on the landscape, it poses the hypothetical question, "What would be the relative risk to a house if one existed here?" This allows comparison of wildfire risk in places where homes already exist to places where new construction may be proposed.
• Exposure Type: Exposure is the spatial coincidence of wildfire likelihood and intensity with communities. This layer delineates where homes are directly exposed to wildfire from adjacent wildland vegetation, indirectly exposed to wildfire from indirect sources such as embers and home-to-home ignition, or not exposed to wildfire due to distance from direct and indirect ignition sources.
• Wildfire Likelihood: The annual probability of wildfire burning in a specific location.

In 2006, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) applied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) through the State of California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) for a Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) Program Grant to implement a project to reduce future wildfire risks to the observatory and surrounding facilities. The university had to agree to a defined property maintenance plan once the project was completed.

The scope of work included vegetation management activities on approximately 48 acres that were divided up into 35 Treatment Units. The treatment units were brought into compliance with the California Public Resource Code 4291-Defensible Space. Which required 100-feet of reduced wildfire fuels around structures and "area treatments", which included reduction of hazardous fuels outside the defensible space area.

This specific project had to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Also, a condition of Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA) grants is the requirement to comply with all applicable environmental and historical preservation laws and regulations. Consequently, all HMA grants must undergo an environmental planning and historic preservation (EHP) review. This process ensures that federal funding is used in a manner consistent with federal laws pertaining to the environmental and historical preservation as well as consideration of the effects to, protection and enhancement of natural and cultural resources.

• Total Project Cost: $507,330 – Funded by the University of California, the 25% cost share was: $126,832, and the 75% FEMA Federal Share was: $380,497
• Defensible Space and Protection of the 64 Structures and Contents valued at $71,673,750

• The Vegetation Management Map below depict the location of the treatment units associated with the project. The unit number shown on the map corresponds to the more detailed information provided in the table, including the specific mitigation techniques utilized throughout the Observatory's property.

• The button below will download the project proposal, consisting of the complete scope of work, information related to specific fuels, maps of the Vegetation Management Units, the environmental and historical preservation considerations taken, and the cost effectiveness associated with the project.

• The poster provides a visual representation of the project area after the Hazard Mitigation Defensible Space and Vegetation Project was completed in 2007. The poster highlights the different Vegetation Management Units and their associated vegetation density. Also noted on the poster are the various hazard reduction methods and fuel disposal techniques performed as part of this project.

In 2017, the University of California executed a re-thinning maintenance project, at the Observatory, which involved removal of oak trees, cutting branches on other trees, removing brush and dead logs.

The purpose of the project was to extend the lifespan of the Hazard Mitigation Defensible Space and Vegetation Project completed in 2007 and reduce the wildfire threat across approximately 31 acres adjacent to the observatory facilities, bringing the campus into compliance with California Public Resource Code 4291.

The video below provides additional background and information related to the 2017 Re-Thinning Maintenance Project

Activities included for the Re-thinning Maintenance Project:

• removal of all dead trees
• removal of dead logs under 6 inch diameter
• removal of all gray pine trees
• thinning of all trees smaller than the minimum specified diameter of that unit
• limb all remaining trees to 8 feet
• removal of all oak shrub and woody brush/tree sprouts
• clearing all brush within 30 feet of propane tanks

• Total Project Cost: $357,000 – Funded by the University of California
• Project Covered 31 Acres – Adjacent to Observatory Structures

You can download the PDF maps created for this project by clicking the button above.

The web map below allows you to pan and zoom around to a specific location to find out more (by clicking on a feature and viewing the pop-up), including specific mitigation treatment methods within each zone/sub unit, and unique disposal methods used, as well as locations where special considerations were taken during the project.

The swipe tool below allows you to see aerial imagery before and after the re-thinning mitigation project. The imagery on the left shows conditions from 2016 (pre-mitigation), and on the right side of the swipe tool, the 2018 imagery reflects conditions post vegetation mitigation.

Additionally, the red stars on the web map below indicate locations where photos of before and after mitigation efforts have been completed. Simply click on the star to see the pop-up.

On August 16, 2020, what started out as 20 different fires sparked by lightning soon merged into one major fire referred to as the SCU Lightning Complex Fire, which landed its assault on the counties of Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus. The video below captures the lightning storm that occurred in the Bay Area and the brush fire, (visible at the right center as a red glow), that later became the SCU Lightning Complex Fire.

After the lightning storm that started on August 16, 2020, the SCU Lightning Complex Fire rapidly spread and started to move towards the south and threatened the Lick Observatory. On the afternoon of August 19, 2020 the fire had reached the Lick Observatory and started burning through many areas of the Observatory. “The fire started on Sunday. By Tuesday, flames were about six miles away,” said Kostas Chloros, Lick Observatory superintendent. “We evacuated the facility’s residents and staff. I stayed behind.”

Cal Fire responded and used the Lick Observatory Main Building functioned as a base camp and as a safety zone during the blaze.

“The fire created 150-foot, 200-foot-high flames. The blaze destroyed an unused residence, a storage facility, and picnic ground restrooms on the property, damaged a few others and downed some power poles. There was no structural damage to the observatory nor nearby buildings,” Chloros said.

Scroll through the map to see the fire path movement and the rapid growth of the SCU Lightning Complex Fire

Chloros witnessed the efficacy of the Hazard Mitigation Defensible Space and Vegetation Project previously completed and stated "the two vegetation management projects reduced much of the fuel around the structures and access roads, this effectively slowed down the fire and allowed Cal fire to gain access and provide protection to the structures in a timely manner. The losses would have been unimageable without the defensible space. The majority of the buildings and some of the domes could have been completely lost if the fire had reached them. The existing fire damages also indicated that the 100 foot defensible space should be enhanced on those very steep slopes".

Use the swipe function to see the locations of structures that sustained the most damage caused by the SCU Fire. Damage photos have also been included with some of the points that sustained the most structure damage. A pop-up legend displaying the structure condition is available when you hover over the button in the bottom left corner.

A Loss Avoidance Study (LAS) was conducted using the best available data from the Lick Observatory, University of California at Santa Cruz, CAL FIRE, and Cal OES. The results of the SCU Lightning Complex Fire Loss Avoidance Study at the Lick Observatory are summarized below:

• Previously Completed Wildfire Mitigation Costs: $864,330

• Lick Observatory Structure Value (including Contents): $77,152,670

• Structure Damages (including Contents): $3,769,707

• Losses Avoided: $72,518,632

A savings of approximately $71.6 million or a ROI (return of investment) of over 8,000%!

Additional information regarding the LAS methodology and calculations, as well as data sources can be found on the following pages. 

You can also review detailed structure information including Building and Content Values, Square Footage, and Year Built via pop-up's when you click on structure icon in the web map below. Red icons depict damaged structures, while orange icons indicate all the structures that did not receive damage due to the effective completed mitigation projects completed prior to the SCU Fire.

The time-lapse video below shows the clean-up efforts along the access road to the Lick Observatory following the SCU Lightning Complex fire

With utilization from FEMA and Cal OES, recovery efforts have begun in some of the affected areas around the Lick Observatory. Wildlife has started making their way back to the property, college courses are starting to take place, and the Lick Observatory is now open to the public.