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The following section should be completed after the BARC has been field validated by the BAER team and this entire metadata file should be returned to GTAC with the Soil Burn Severity data.

Fire name: MILES

 
    BAER Assessment Completion Date:9/20/2018
    BAER Team GIS Analyst:Chris Strobl
    BAER Team Leader: Joe Blanchard
    Soil Burn Severity Analyst(s): Lizeth Ochoa
    
    Original BARC256 thresholds:
        Unburned / Undetectable: <=81
        Low: >81 and <=115
        Moderate: >115 and <=202
        High: >202
        
    Soil Burn Severity thresholds:
        Unburned / Undetectable:<=59
        Low:>59 and <=109
        Moderate:>109 and <=182
        High:>182
        
    Sequence of steps used to create Soil Burn Severity data:
Reclassified BARC image for new breakpoints described in previous and following section.  Smoothed outputs to the satisfaction of the Soils Scientist and then reprojected to R6 Albers NAD83 and extracted by fire perimeter.  Finally, used Raster to Polygon tool to create polygon vector data.
    
    Additional Comments:
The field observations indicated that the BARC overestimated high and moderate soil burn severity, and underestimated low soil burn severity. Similar field observations were observed in the Snowshoe Fire as Columbus and Miles Fire. Similarly in the Snowshoe Fire, areas rated as high were field verified to be rock outcrops, and were edited at the appropriate localized sites. The final severity map shows smaller patches of both high and moderate severity while increasing the low severity. 
All soils within the fire perimeters had had soil conditions exhibiting to some extent water repellant soils pre-fire environment. Under unburned conditions, these environments are prone where high pre-fire duff accumulations exist and where soil drying is common during hot, dry summer months. As such this indicator was measured, but was not the determining factor in selecting the observed soil burn severity.