Wildfire Β· GIS Β· Python Β· NIFC Β· OpenStreetMap Β· Oregon RFPAs
π₯ Wildfire Response Gaps
"It's already on the ground."
When a wildfire ignites in eastern Oregon, the nearest mapped fire station can be hours away. On a map of stations that looks like a hole in the safety net. It isn’t: out there the first responders are often ranchers, organized into Oregon’s Rangeland Fire Protection Associations. Of the 113 Oregon fires this season more than 50 km from a station, 111 burned in counties where those associations operate.
Haversine distances from 3,635 fire perimeters to the nearest mapped fire station across California, Oregon, and Washington. The Oregon finding was unexpected: a median fire-to-station distance of 26.7 km β three times California's β with 30% of fires beyond 50km from any station. In Malheur County, the median is 139 km. Every single fire is beyond 50km.
The pipeline runs itself: early every morning Python fetches fresh perimeters from the NIFC WFIGS service, measures the distance from each burn to the nearest OpenStreetMap fire station, checks the far ones against RFPA counties, and redraws the season map. Station locations refresh monthly.
| State | Fires | Median Distance | % Beyond 50km | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington | 1,388 | 8.6 km | 1.9% | Dense station coverage Β· western model works |
| California | 1,051 | 10.8 km | 1.5% | Populated corridors well-covered |
| Oregon | 1,196 | 26.7 km β | 30.1% β | Eastern rangeland structural gap β RFPAs fill the void |
Why Oregon Is Different
Eastern Oregon is enormous, sparsely populated rangeland. Malheur County alone is 9,930 square miles β larger than New Hampshire β with a median fire-to-station distance of 139.1 km. Every single fire in the county is beyond 50km from any mapped station.
Oregon's answer is Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPAs) β legally recognized volunteer networks of ranchers and landowners organized to protect over 17.5 million acres that have no existing state or local fire protection. Codified in Oregon statute. Oregon is the only state in the country with this formal structure.
The infrastructure gap is real. The people filling it are remarkable.
Frenchglen Fire Guard Station
Frenchglen Fire Guard Station sits in Harney County β population approximately 12. It is the nearest mapped station to 148 wildfires covering 516,867 acres, with a mean estimated response time of 114 minutes.
But Frenchglen isn't alone. It's one node in a network that includes the Frenchglen RFPA, BLM resources, and US Fish & Wildlife. The ranchers in these associations are often on scene hours before federal resources arrive β with fire-equipped trucks, slip-on water tanks, and generations of knowledge of this land.
The largest fire in Frenchglen's coverage zone: the Falls Fire β 151,683 acres, 2024.
Data Warehousing · Snowflake · dbt · FIA
🌲 Half a Million Trees
531,490 federal forest inventory measurements loaded into Snowflake, modeled in dbt. Where Washington's biomass actually is, where it dies, and what two days of learning a new stack turned up before the weekend was over.
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Snowflake · dbt · USGS · NLDI
🏞 The Creek That Isn't There
Two USGS gages, a basin boundary derived independently in Snowflake and checked against the published figure, and a hometown creek that floods 200-to-1 against its own average.
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WUI Β· Search & Rescue Β· Phoenix FD Β· Clustering
π₯ RIDGELINE β WUI Call Volume
86K+ Phoenix Fire Department dispatch incidents. Four behavioral clusters extracted from real nature codes. Interactive maps, CI/CD pipeline.
View project β
Hydrology Β· USGS Β· Leaflet Β· Sierra Nevada
π§ Sierra Streamflow Monitor
8 USGS stream gages mapped across Sierra Nevada watersheds. Historical spaghetti charts, Leaflet map, weekly GitHub Actions cron.
View dashboard β
Lidar Β· Archaeology Β· USGS 3DEP Β· forge3d
πΊ Project Kiva
An atlas of twelve archaeological places in bare-earth lidar, from Chaco Canyon to Cahokia, Serpent Mound and two Wisconsin effigy mounds. Points streamed from the USGS archive, five relief views, and each site turned in 3D with forge3d.
Open the atlas β
Lidar Β· Forestry Β· Finland Β· Validation
π² LiDAR Explore
A synthetic Finnish forest with every tree known, then 1,840 real stands checked against Finland's national inventory. Spin the point cloud, thin the laser and watch detection fall apart, and click any stand. Rebuilt from the open data on GitHub.
Explore it β