Methods
Study Area
We selected one map zone as a proving ground for our modeling approach, but these methods could be applied to any and all United States map zones. Map zones were developed in the United States by the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center (http://www.nationalmap.gov). They are broad biophysical land units represented by similar surface landforms, land cover conditions, and natural resources; there are 66 in the continental United States (Figure 1).
Map zone 16 falls almost entirely within the State of Utah. Within this study area, we evaluated wildland fire danger for the 575 subwatersheds that were entirely contained within map zone 16 (Figure 2). The average size of subwatersheds was 8,300 ha, and size ranged from 2,800 to 18,000 ha. For reference, a subwatershed represents the 6th level in the watershed hierarchy of the U.S. Geological Survey (Seaber and others 1987).
- Data Sources : Most spatial data used in this study came from the LANDFIRE prototype project mapping effort.
- Broad Outline : We evaluate relative fire danger in individual subwatersheds of an entire map zone.
- Implementation Steps : Under the fire hazard topic, we estimated for each elementary topic (lowest level in the model where data are evaluated) the percentage area and degree of aggregation of observations exceeding a specified threshold value using spatial data layers provided by the LANDFIRE project and a spatial analysis program.
- Logic Model Design : We graphically designed the logic model for evaluating the relative danger of wildland fire (hereafter, fire danger) with the NetWeaver Developer (Rules of Thumb, Inc., North East, PA) modeling system.
- Priorities for Fuels Treatment : A decision model for determining priorities of subwatersheds for fuels treatment was graphically designed with Criterium DecisionPlus (InfoHarvest, Inc., Seattle, WA), which uses both the analytic hierarchy process and the Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique to support planning activities such as priority setting, alternative selection, and resource allocation.
- Analysis : Fire danger evaluation for all subwatersheds in the study area was performed with the NetWeaver logic engine in EMDS.
Encyclopedia ID: p3634
