GIS on Fire
May 9-13, 2005
Worley and Plummer, Idaho



In the week of May 9, 2005 the Coeur d'Alene Tribe’s GIS Program hosted a workshop entitled "GIS on Fire". The event was sponsored by the USGS EROS Data Center and the BIA NW Regional Office.

About 50 representatives from different agencies attended and new ideas and methodologies were shared concerning how GIS serves as a useful tool for wildfire mitigation and forestry management. The information given was received well and most seemed to leave with a new sense of what can be done with GIS in forest and fire management.

The following is a list of agencies represented at this workshop:
Tribal: Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Colville Confederated Tribes, Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, Nez Perce Tribe, Quinault Indian Nation, Spokane Tribe, Yakama Nation
Federal: BLM, BIA, USFS, USGS
Academic: University of Idaho, University of Montana
Non-Profit/Other: Student Conservation Association (SCA),Systems for Environmental Management


GIS on Fire Agenda

Wednesday, May 11th 8:00AM – 4:30PM

• Opening Remarks: What we hope get out of this – Frank Roberts and Eric Wood

Fire/Land Management on Reservations

• Fire Planning on the Coeur d'Alene Reservation – Joshua Arnold
• GIS and Fire on Flathead Reservation / Farsite Export Model for ArcGIS – Pete Gillard - Volker Mell
• Data Capture, Road Access and Closures on the Flathead Reservation – Martin Zobel
• LMS on Colville Reservation – Grant Timentwa
• Fuels Monitoring on Nez Perce Reservation – Tim Droegmiller
• Forest Inventory and GIS Integration on Nez Perce Reservation– Rich Botto

USGS LANDFIRE Process

• Part 1. LANDFIRE USGS Eros Data Center, Souix Falls, SD – Jay Kost
• Part 2. LANDFIRE USGS Eros Data Center, Souix Falls, SD – Jay Kost
• Vegetation Mapping USFS Firelab, Missoula, MT – Jennifer Long

Thursday, May 12th 8:00AM – 4:30PM

Remote Sensing

• Overview of vegetation cover and use of LiDAR – James Twoteeth
• Landcover/use detection through remote sensing – Laurie Ames
• Predicating Forest Biophysical Properties with LiDAR – Jenn Jensen
• Calculating forest densities with LiDAR – Eric Rowell

BIA

• Fire planning/fuels reduction efforts - Gene Lonning
• CFI Data – Arnie Browning

FIREMON

• Overview of Firemon database – Duncan Lutes
• Transferring CFI data to Firemon database – Joshua Arnold
• Gathering FIREMON data for remote sensing effort – Kassy Theobald

Friday, May 13th 8:00AM – 11:30AM

Lab Exercise - Fuel Mapping Exercise using Sample data and working through Landfire Process
Went through the Land fire basics on how to use the FIREMON plot data to create vegetation structural stages models utilizing See5 and Cubist data mining packages. Went through a step-by-step process on how to create spatial output using the Landfire methodology using tribal plot data. Also talked about how to use the structural stage maps to produce a fuels layer using local knowledge and fuels expertise. Touched on how the fire lab produces FARSITE layers based on a program called Fuelcalc.

• Class Room Examples of Coeur d'Alene Landfire Process – James Twoteeth
• See5 & ERDAS IMAGINE CART Module Procedural Example – Jay Kost