Spatial Wildfire Analyst, Vibrant Planet

Remote

Position Title: Spatial Wildfire Analyst

Organization: Vibrant Planet

Location: Remote

Organization Overview: Vibrant Planet harnesses data driven science and cloud-based technology to help make communities and ecosystems more resilient in the face of climate change.

Their goal is to help planners and policy makers save lives, avoid trillions of dollars in infrastructure loss, and restore the ability of natural systems to store carbon, deliver clean water, and support biodiversity, local economies, and recreational habits.

Position Overview: Balancing the needs of fire adapted communities with the requirements of resilient wildlands is an exercise in tradeoffs. The cultivation of data and application of science into strategic frameworks that enable tradeoff consensus is critical for ecosystem planning through treatments. However, time is running out. Many wildlands are at a tipping point and traditional multi-jurisdictional planning and monitoring isn’t currently efficient or adaptable enough to keep up with the rates of change being experienced. Vibrant Planet’s Land Tender, with USDA’s FORSYS engine embedded, is an optimized decision support system for hazard mitigation and ecological restoration across all natural systems so they can help communities and managers get to implementation fast and effectively adapt those plans when conditions inevitably change. They need additional talent for Land Tender’s growing demand.

A significant portion of Land Tender’s behind-the-scenes calculations depend on wildfire hazard modeling. As a basis for fire modeling, the development of calibrated, current fuelscapes is a crucial step in improving Land Tender assessments.

They are seeking an experienced, technically skilled, and motivated individual with great attention to detail to help Vibrant Planet’s Resilience Group and Pyrologix team develop, improve, and further automate fuelscapes required by Land Tender, some general spatial analytical support, or other duties as assigned. While the position is mostly virtual, some travel may be required. The majority of this work occurs in the western United States, but software deployment opportunities may occur across the world.

Duties: 

  • Improve fuelscape calibration across the nation, and potentially develop fuelscapes internationally
  • Contribute to further development of fuelscape automation
  • Perform spatial and temporal data analysis
  • Develop geospatial data and modeling frameworks
  • Adhere to data standards and naming conventions, maintain and update metadata
  • Incorporate data quality assurance and quality control
  • Document methodology and contribute to reports
  • Contribute to proposal development for new business opportunities

Minimum Qualifications:

  • Knowledge of surface fuel models, such as the Scott and Burgan Standard 40 Fire Behavior Fuel Models (FBFM40), experience with practical applications preferred
  • Strong background in GIS applications and principles
  • Enjoys complex, multi-disciplinary problem-solving and has excellent attention to detail
  • Ability to learn new concepts quickly
  • Excellent communication skills (oral, written)

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Experience with fuelscape vegetation and fuels datasets, such as datasets produced by LANDFIRE’s vegetation team and fuels team. Some examples of these datasets include: Existing Vegetation Type (EVT), Fuels Vegetation Cover (FVC), Canopy Cover (CC), Canopy Base Height (CBH), and Fuel Disturbance (FDist).
  • Experience working in wildfire sciences and/or management, such as incident response, fuels management, fire research, etc.
  • Experience with Python geospatial libraries such as GeoPandas, Rasterio, Shapely, GDAL, and ArcPy with the ability to utilize existing Python scripts and to contribute to the enhancement and automation of fuelscape processing.
  • Familiarity with land management and wildfire decision support datasets, models, software, and workflows. For example, LANDFIRE, USFS Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS), DOI National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS), FlamMap, Nexus, WindNinja, FSim, Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS), Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), Google Earth Engine.
  • Familiarity with the geospatial requirements for forest treatment implementation and understanding of fuel reduction planning, post-fire restoration, treatment implementation, and monitoring challenges.
  • Familiarity with processing remote sensing datasets such as LiDAR, NAIP, and LANDSAT.
  • Understanding of ecology in dry forests and Mediterranean environments and ecological forest management; ability to effectively communicate concepts to lay audiences.
  • Familiarity with policies related to procedures for environmental review and impact analysis, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, California Environmental Quality Act, etc

Start Date: Early February 2024

Salary/Pay: $80-130k base salary (dependent on experience)

Application Deadline: December 11

How to Apply: Please use the online application to view the full job description as well as how to apply.