Getting Started: Landscape Editing

Introduction

Important! Default Fuels Treatment / Disturbance Edit Rules are ONLY available for LANDFIRE 2012 and 2014 landscapes within the contiguous United States. Versions for more recent landscapes are under development.

User Created Edit Rules can be applied to any landscape.

Important! Be deliberate in the rules you apply when editing landscapes:

Rules are applied based on the order in which you add them. Default Treatment/Disturbance rules are always applied first, in the order you have assigned them, followed by User Created Edit rules in the order you have assigned them.

After applying rules to a given landscape you should always validate that your changes have been made as you intended. If you are unsure of the effect of the rules you apply, consider saving a version of your landscape after each edit to allow for easy comparison of the changes made by each edit rule you apply.

For further detail see the Rule Ordering Considerations and the Rule Technical Documentation topics

IFTDSS users often edit landscapes to better represent the conditions on their home unit, or to simulate landscape conditions after fuel treatments. Editing can be performed across the entire landscape or constrained to an area of interest using a shape you've created in IFTDSS, or shapefile you've uploaded, as a mask. When you edit a landscape, IFTDSS retains your original landscape, and creates a new copy containing your edits, this means your original landscape is always retained.

There are two editing options in IFTDSS:

  • Default Fuels Treatment/Disturbance Rules: Pre-existing rules built into IFTDSS.
  • Add Landscape Edit Rules: Custom rules you create.

How to Get Started with Landscape Editing

Landscape editing often begins by selecting Landscape Edit in the Landscape Evaluation stage of the IFTDSS Planning Cycle. You can also access it from the Implementation Planning stage of the cycle.

Landscape Edit card in IFTDSS

Click the expanding text below to view the steps for each approach to editing.

  1. Choose the Starting Landscape you want to edit.
  2. Click the Add User Created Edit Rule to view the Add Landscape Rule options.

  3. Specify the conditions you would like to select in the fields below Where these conditions exist. In this example we have selected "Fuel Model" as the Attribute, "is equal to" as the Operator and fire behavior fuel model "165 (TU5)" as the Value. This selected all TU5 fuel modeled areas.

    Tip: Need a quick comparison of fuel models? If so, try downloading the Fuel Model Comparison spreadsheet.

  4. Specify the conditions you would like to change by populating the fields below Modify the following values. In the example pictured here we have selected "Canopy Cover" as the Attribute, "decrease by" as the Operator, and "5" (for 5 percent) as the Value. For all TU5 fuel modeled areas, the application decreases the canopy cover by 5 percent.
  5. The Apply to Landscape Mask (optional) drop-down allows you to constrain your edits to the area within a mask of your choosing. When this field is left blank, the edits are applied to the entire landscape.

  6. When you are ready to apply this rule select Add to Rules.

    Important! When creating editing rules:

    • Landscape features are not dependent upon each other when editing. When editing an LCP with User Created Edit Rules, changing one feature such as Fire Behavior Fuel Model, will not make changes to other features such as canopy height cover, etc. For example, changing a Timber Understory Fuel Model to a Grass Fuel Model will change the Fuel Model, but all the timber canopy features will remain until you edit them as well.

    • When decreasing canopy cover, which is in units of 'percent', IFTDSS uses percentage points. For example, decreasing 55% cover by 50 will result in 5% cover. An efficient way decrease the canopy cover by half, would be to multiply the canopy cover by 0.5.

    Adding a landscape edit rule using the dropdown and text fields to specify attributes, operators, modifiers, and values

  7. When added, the rule will appear in a list at the top of page, just under the Starting Landscape field, and the order will be noted if you have multiple rules. You can delete rules before saving by using the delete button delete button to the right of each rule. Rules are applied top to bottom in the order in which you add them. You may continue to create and apply rules, or name or save your landscape if you are finished.
  8. (Optional) You may add a note about this edit session, up to 512 characters, that will be visible from My Workspace when the edited landscape is selected.
  9. Give your landscape a descriptive name so you will know what edits were made, and click the Save New Landscape button.

  10. You will see a confirmation that your landscape has been saved.

    name your edited landscape when finished and save.

The edited landscape is stored in the same folder in IFTDSS as the landscape it was derived from. Landscape edits may take a few minutes to process. Once edits are complete, the edited landscape will be available in drop-down menus throughout IFTDSS where-ever a landscape input is required.

  1. Double check that your landscape is selected.

  2. Make sure the Add Default Fuels Treatment/Disturbance Edit Rule heading is open (if not, click the arrow next to the tab heading).

    Click the arrow in the far right of the panel heading to expand the panel and show user input fields.

    3. Tip: If you hover your mouse over the “Light Thinning; Pile Burning” it will give you the details on what the rule represents. They are also listed in the Treatment Rule Background

  3. Select a treatment or disturbance.
  4. Use the radio buttons (if applicable) to further specify treatment details.
  5. Select the time since disturbance.
  6. (Optional) select a landscape mask to constrain your rule application to a specific area.

  7. Click the Add to Rules button

    using the default edit rules is a quick way to simulate treatments on the landscape

  8. After clicking the Add to Rules button, a notification appears to confirm the rule had been added. You can continue to add rules before saving your landscape. Rules are implemented in the order you add them, for further detail see Rule Ordering Considerations.

    notification that confirms editing rule has been submitted

  9. (Optional) You may add a note about this edit session, up to 512 characters, that will be visible from My Workspace when the edited landscape is selected.
  10. Once you are finished editing, scroll to the bottom of the screen, name the landscape so its easy to see what treatment it represents (e.g. GC12 Lt Thn PileRx 1yr), and click Save New Landscape.

    11. Important! It is recommended to keep the landscape names around 30 characters in length for later reporting steps to run smoothly in the IFTDSS system.

  11. Once the new landscape is saved, a notification will appear in the bottom right of the screen that confirms it has been successfully submitted.

    you will recieve a message confirming your edit rule has been saved

The edited landscape is stored in the same folder in IFTDSS as the landscape it was derived from. Landscape edits may take a few minutes to process. Once edits are complete, the edited landscape will be available in drop-down menus throughout IFTDSS where-ever a landscape input is required.

Important! A maximum of five Landscape editing requests may be submitted at any given time. If you see a pop-up notifying you that this number has been exceeded, complete your task when one of the other requests has completed.

Tip: When clicking on landscape files that have been edited in My Workspace, you will see an option to View Edit Rules. This displays the edits that were made on that landscape.

Additional Information

Editing Landscape Data for Landscape Evaluation: Step by step walk-through of how to make edits using each of the two methods.

About User-Created Edit Rules: Explanation of the various User-Created Edit rules available in the editing interface.

Rule Ordering Considerations when Editing Landscapes: The order in which you apply your rules matters, this page describes this in more depth and gives several examples.

Landscape Editing - Default Fuel Treatment and Disturbance: A brief description of each Default Fuels Treatment/Disurbance rule in IFTDSS.

Default Fuels Treatment / Disturbance Edit Rule Technical Documentation: An in-depth description of how Default Fuels Treatment/Disurbance rules were created.