3D Reconstruction Post Pile Burns at Jasper Ridge 'Ootchamin 'Ooyakma Biological Preserve Mapache Burn Unit

Prescribed burns are a critical and increasingly used fire management tool, with benefits for reducing fire risk while also promoting ecosystem health. However, many open questions remain about the hyperlocal spatiotemporal intricacies of the post-fire ecology, especially at the wildland-urban interface. Efforts to comprehensively answer these questions can benefit from both novel spatiotemporal methods and new, targeted, hyperlocal datasets. Pursuant to this, we collected imagery at the Stanford Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve ‘Ootchamin ‘Ooyakma (JRBP‘O‘O) following the 2024 prescribed pile burns, which occurred in the southeast of the preserve, bordering Portola Valley. We collected tablet and smartphone imagery once per calendar month from February 2025 to February 2026. Each capture was generated from roughly 200 images and includes corresponding 3D reconstructions, including meshes, point clouds, and 3D Gaussian Splats, created using the Polycam app. Data collected from July 2025 onward includes additional sparse depth data from the iPad’s built-in solid-state light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor. Additional imagery and reconstructions were collected opportunistically to highlight visible shifts in the ecosystem or simply to repeat the collection. We captured disparate ecological trajectories at two piles: one pile featured the return of the endemic western bewildering bushmallow (Malacothamnus arcuatus var. arcuatus), and the other, situated on a hill, exhibited less prominent vegetation recovery and received follow-on manual fuel reduction. We believe this dataset can assist researchers in building further hyperlocal spatiotemporal tools and in performing cross-comparisons with other chaparral ecosystems following fire management.