At a Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting, county staff and consultants demonstrated newly published LiDAR‑derived geospatial products now available through the county GIS portal and external download links. Presenters said the data will help landowners, planners and fire managers better target forest health and fuels‑reduction projects.

Terry, Lake County’s climate resiliency officer, introduced the demonstration and credited multiple funding partners and grants that enabled Lake County’s inclusion in a North Coast LiDAR acquisition. "Lon is gonna show the board and the public how to navigate to the GIS...named LiDAR derivatives," she said at the opening of the presentation.

Lon Sharp, the county GIS specialist, guided the board through the County Community Maps portal, showing how non‑GIS users can enable layers for hillshade, slope, aspect and canopy height; use search by address or parcel; draw polygons and measure distances; and request 1‑foot interval elevation contours via a clip‑and‑email tool. Lon cautioned that the datasets are large and that map layers can take time to load depending on users’ internet connections.

Mark Tuckman of Tuckman Geospatial described the derivative products and their uses. He said the datasets are broadly divided into topography products (detailed ground and building elevations, slope, aspect) and vegetation products (canopy height, vegetation density, ladder fuels). "The canopy height model gives you information about the height of trees," Tuckman said, noting some crowns on the slide were about 150 feet (more than 45 meters).

Tuckman said the data are available for download via data links and on pacificvegemap.org and that UC Berkeley’s Geographic Innovation Facility is hosting server resources donated by local supporters. He highlighted the clip‑and‑email contour tool as one of the county’s most popular offerings for planners and engineers.

Looking ahead, Tuckman said the Wildfire Ecosystem Resilience and Risk Assessment (WORK) initiative will produce additional derivatives including maps of disturbance, building footprints and, most notably, a tree‑mortality product. "It will show every tree and whether that tree is dead, living, or on its way to dying," he said, and the county expects that product in 2026. He also said the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has committed funding for a fine‑scale vegetation map for Lake County, slated for 2027, which will support creation of a 5‑meter fuel model for fire‑behavior modeling.

Mike Wink, assistant chief for CAL FIRE’s pre‑fire division for the Sonoma–Lake–Napa–Solano–Yolo–Colusa unit, praised Lake County’s GIS tools and staff. He said the datasets make it easier to quantify risk, prepare grant applications and prioritize mitigation. Wink also noted a 2025 Local Response Area update from the State Fire Marshal that extends hazard mapping into city limits and can be used by local fire councils applying for grant funding.

During board discussion, Supervisor Pyska asked how the annual tracking of tree mortality would work given LiDAR is a point‑in‑time dataset. Tuckman replied that the LiDAR snapshot will be updated through periodic aerial imagery (referred to in the presentation as NAIP/NAEP imagery) that is released roughly every two years, allowing the derived maps to be updated programmatically.

In public comment, resident Tom Lasik praised the county product but asked for clear, user‑friendly instructions for requesting 1‑foot contours and for exporting data in common GIS formats (KML/KMZ). Sterling Wellman, calling from Spring Valley, asked CAL FIRE whether the mitigation programs provide funding to construct secondary access roads for subdivisions with a single ingress/egress. "There is not funding," Mike Wink replied, saying the tools identify communities without a second way out but CAL FIRE does not fund construction of secondary access roads.

The board closed the item after the presentation and public comment.

The county’s presenters said the near‑term benefits include improved planning, more accurate grant applications, and new datasets to prioritize fuels‑reduction projects; the most concrete schedule items are the tree‑mortality product expected in 2026 and the fine‑scale vegetation map in 2027.