The Upper Tuolumne River Ecosystem Program: Rim Fire vegetation tracker

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Rim Fire vegetation tracker

The Forest Carbon research team at NASA Ames Research Center has launched the Rim Fire Tracker online map viewer to help track regenerating vegetation areas within the 2013 burned severity classes. The maps feature changes in current (2014) Landsat 8 NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) compared to last October's (post-burn) NDVI. The map layers will be updated every month with a new Landsat NDVI difference product. Subsequent image analysis of the vegetation community in regenerating areas will be added to this map viewer over time. Tools are provided to zoom to a location, identify values, and download map layers. Subsequent image analysis of the vegetation community in regenerating areas will be added based on the methods published previously by Potter et al. (2012).

About the Program

The Tuolumne River is located on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in central California. With headwaters in Yosemite National Park, the Tuolumne flows westward 150 miles to its confluence with the San Joaquin River in California's Central Valley.

The Upper Tuolumne River Ecosystem Program (UTREP) is a collaborative, long-term, science-based river management program led by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC).

The UTREP monitors river ecosystem conditions and develops recommendations for river management downstream of Hetch Hetchy Project facilities to support broad river ecosystem values, while maintaining water supply reliability for 2.6 million San Francisco Bay Area customers and providing clean hydropower for San Francisco municipal facilities.

Scientific collaborators include Yosemite National Park, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Stanislaus National Forest, consultants, researchers, and academics.

STATUS: UTREP efforts are currently focused on technical review and revision of the O'Shaughnessy Dam Instream Flow Management Plan and routine annual monitoring.