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Project ID: 04-4-1-21

Year: 2004

Date Started: 08/31/2004

Date Completed: 08/20/2007

Title: A Web-Based Information System for Estimating Fuel Characteristics, Fire-Hazard, and Treatment Effectiveness and Costs in Montana and New Mexico

Project Proposal Abstract: An impressive mix of models, analyses, fuel classifications, and databases has flowed from ongoing JSFP-funded projects. There is now a compelling need to integrate some of these products into tools that allow planners to profile fuel conditions at the strategic level, and allow managers to evaluate hazard reduction treatment effectiveness and cost at the project level. Objectives of this project are to: 1) classify MT and NM's forestlands into fuel characteristic classes (FCC's) by forest type, density, and structure; 2) develop an interactive, web-based information system that managers can use to evaluate the effectiveness and costs of hazard reduction treatments, and 3) develop descriptions and computer visualizations of primary forest type/density/structure combinations that will allow users without inventories to estimate FCC's, fire hazard, and treatment costs for their conditions of interest. Recent completion of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) inventories for MT and NM, coupled with a fuel characteristic classification system (FCCS), prescription simulation and computational algorithms (UM), and treatment cost/product value models and databases (UM), provide the components for this web-based information system. We will link inventories, computational algorithms, models, and databases so that users can query and retrieve (or calculate) estimates of existing fuel characteristics and associated spread, crowning, and fire effects indexes, and potential effectiveness and costs of hazard reduction treatments. Planners/policy makers will be able to classify fuel characteristics (FCC's) for strategic planning areas based on FIA inventory data, while managers will be able to estimate hazard indexes and treatment effectiveness and costs based on user-supplied stand-level inventories. Lacking inventory data of any kind, users will be able to develop forest type or stand-level estimates of existing hazard and treatment effectiveness based on descriptions, photographs, or computer visualizations that most closely match their conditions of interest. Finally, users will be able to estimate treatment costs while planning projects at any scale, whether a strategic hazard reduction program, a multiple-unit or stand-level project on federal lands, or a five-acre ranchette in the wildland/urban interface.

Principal Investigator: Carl Fiedler

Agency/Organization: University of Montana

Branch or Dept: College of Forestry & Conservation

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Charles Keegan	University of Montana	Bureau of Business & Economics Research
Federal Cooperator	Roger D. Ottmar	Forest Service	PNW-Seattle-Managing Natural Disturbances

Project Locations

Consortium

Northern Rockies

Southwest

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

There are no deliverables available for this project.

Supporting Documents

The following supporting documents are available for this project.

Brief

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