High Severity Wildfire in California
Cartography · Data Viz
This map was a true jigsaw puzzle! I was tasked with fitting many different pieces of information on the same map, and my challenge was to convey the story of our sweeping work on wildfire recovery in the American West, in response to ever-increasing damage from high severity wildfire.
The first order of business was to convey the extent of high severity fire in the West—however, we only had RAVG data available in California and for one huge fire footprint in Southern Oregon. Next, I worked on a basemap that conveys “heat”—layering a forest raster, MBTS wildfire extents, major rivers, and state boundaries over a warm neutral orange. I dug up project locations for the past four years out of several different databases and georeferenced them. I ultimately made a call to focus on the story of our reforestation work in California due to the data limitations, and used a false drop shadow technique to frame the story. I was also asked to fit in the Sacramento River watershed and the Colorado and Gila Rivers, which were of interest to a key funder, and make them part of the story. Finally, we also wanted to showcase several statewide programs and policies that were not geographically specific.
I love the result—it’s rich, layered and visually compelling. Hope you like it too!
