The Combustible Landscape
In wildfire management, intuition is a dangerous substitute for data. You can walk a stand of timber and think it looks "risky," but without a systematic assessment of the fuel load, you are just guessing at fire behavior. When the Santa Ana winds kick in or the lightning strikes, that lack of data translates into lost time and compromised safety. If you aren't logging the specific composition of the forest floor, you aren't managing risk; you're just waiting for a disaster.
This template is a technical field journal for the forestry professional. It replaces the loose-leaf field notes with a structured, GPS-linked database that captures the biological reality of the forest.
The Daily Reality: Mapping the Fuel
The power of this system is its focus on fuel classification. It doesn't just ask if the risk is high; it forces a choice of Fuel Type—from C2 - regeneration to C4 - pole sapling. This level of detail is critical for fire modeling. A fire moves through a stand of young saplings differently than it does through mature timber. By recording the Forest Risk and Ground Risk (low vs. high) at every Waypoint, you create a three-dimensional map of potential fire intensity.
The UTM location and Marker fields (POC, EOT, Trail start) ensure that your data is geo-spatially accurate. You aren't just "in the woods"; you are at a precise coordinate, documenting a specific hazard. The inclusion of a Photo field allows you to capture the vertical structure of the forest—the "ladder fuels" that allow a ground fire to climb into the canopy.
The Data Payoff: Triage and Mitigation
After a week of field surveys, you move from individual observations to a strategic overview. You can filter for all "High" risk waypoints where the fuel type is "C2." This allows you to prioritize fuel reduction work—brush thinning or controlled burns—where they will have the most impact. The Date/Time stamp provides the necessary audit trail for environmental compliance and grant reporting. You aren't just saying "we checked the forest"; you are presenting a time-stamped, evidence-backed risk assessment that drives real-world mitigation.