Case Study: Student Conservation Association achieves faster, more accurate wildfire-fuel mapping with Trimble

Conservationists enlist Trimble technology to foil wildfires

The Student Conservation Association (SCA), working with USGS and the USDA Forest Service on the nationwide LANDFIRE project, needed to map and understand natural fire fuels after the 2003 wildfire season that burned about five million acres. The challenge was to conduct thorough, on‑the‑ground vegetation surveys across remote, harsh terrain and get standardized, timely data to scientists and fire managers.

SCA trained interns and equipped field teams with rugged Trimble Recon handhelds running GPS/ArcPad to digitize observations and upload daily to an enterprise database. The mobile GIS workflow removed paper maps, sped data delivery to labs, improved the accuracy and coverage of fuel maps, helped identify high‑risk areas for managers, and gave students practical GIS/GPS experience.

Student Conservation Association