Creating Areas of Interest

To create an Area of Interest (AOI), or polygon, you'll first adjust the layer visibility to make it easier to identify the areas on which you'd like to focus:

  1. If you have not done so already, open the Basemap Gallery widget basemap gallery and change the basemap to “Imagery with Labels” so you can see landscape imagery.
  2. Set up the Layer List widget Layer List widget to show the 97th percentile fire behavior output layer for "Flame Lengths", and set the transparency so you can see roads and topography as you create your AOI, or treatment area.

    set the layer list to view flame length

  3. Open the Create/Edit Shapes widget create or edit shapes at the bottom of the screen and ensure Polygons is selected in the drop-down box.
  4. Next you will create two shapes similar to those shown below (they need not match exactly). Select the Freehand Polygon freehand draw polygon button option, and draw a shape around one of the areas of significant fire behavior.

    treatment areas are now visible in map studio

    Select the Freehand Polygon freehand draw button option again and draw a second a shape around the second area that exhibited significant fire behavior. You'll concentrate on these areas for developing and comparing treatments to meet the objectives of reducing the fire hazard in this area, and returning low intensity fire to this landscape.

  5. Name this “Granite Creek Proposed Treatment Areas”.
  6. Select the "Granite Creek Treatments" folder. This will ensure the AOI is filed in the same location in My Workspace as all the other Granite Creek project files.
  7. Click Create. These two areas are now saved as a single shape and available in the Layer List widget Layer List widget in Map Studio, as well as in your "Granite Creek Treatments" folder in My Workspace.

    create shapefiles using the 'Create/Edit Shapes' option in Map Studio

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