Data Sources: United States Forest Service, ESRI, USGS, Landfire, FSim, and BLM

Firesheds: The ‘fireshed’ consists of two features, one as a buffer around communities where artificial ignitions are highly probable or where a fire serves a direct threat the community, this is labelled as the ignition zone. The fireshed is defined as an area where any ignition has continuous fuels and is likely to spread to communities in less than 45 minutes (Ager et al. 2014, 2018, 2019). In this case, it is assumed that fire behavior is <80th percentile, thus some fuel types, like aspen, are viewed as not being part of the fireshed. These layers were derived using Landfire data.

Burn probability: This layer was developed using a combination of Landfire data and FSim outputs to create the likeliness that a fire could occur based on fuel type, fuel continuity, and flame length. This layer is also based on <80 percentile fire behavior.

Forest types: This layer was derived from Landfire data to be consistent with the fire models produced on the national level. Vegetation types were extracted and merged into simplified common forest types based on ecologically relevant attributes.

Fire on Landscape: This layer is based on burn probability and fire behavior model outputs from FSim and fuel information from Landfire. This assumes fires occurring at <80th percentile conditions. The result is initially estimates of portion of a cell that will behave as a low, mixed, or stand replacing fire. The layer is then weighted by proximity to community (fireshed) and then by forest type, thus interpreting whether fire is desirable is based on fire behavior and ecological relevance of fire. One can interpret this layer as either prescribed fire or as managed fire for ecological, or fuels reduction benefit. In areas where fire is labelled as undesirable, this could be because of lack of continuous fuels or because of abundant fuels that may result in uncharacteristic fire. Of course, under certain weather conditions, fire managers could decide fire to have benefit or harm that disagrees with the layers on this map and resource specialists should always use actual current conditions for decision making. Note: Spruce-fir forests were not included in this analysis because these forests tend to burn at stand replacing intensities infrequently and fire managers will have to respond to ignitions in these forest types as appropriate on a case by case scenario.

Mechanical Treatments: Mechanical Treatment Priorities are based on areas where fuel loads and/or canopy cover are higher than desired for either wildfire spread, with weight added to the ignition zone. Mechanical treatments are also filtered by suitable slope for mechanical entry and thus slopes >35% steepness are excluded.  Spruce-fir forests are not included in this analysis because mechanical intervention in these forests is rarely ecologically relevant nor a relevant fire management tool given the infrequent fire of these forests.

Aspen Regeneration Cuts: These layers are based on overall aspen health where insects and disease or sudden aspen decline have been observed. Areas of highest priority are areas with the greatest decline in aspen health where regeneration cuts could promote suckering and improve aspen health. This layer only considers slopes <35% steepness.

Salvage Logging: This layer is based on areas with high levels of insect based mortality and thus salvage logging may be an appropriate action. It also only considers slopes <35% steepness. Note: I based this on 2018 overflight data and thus it may represent smaller geographies than historic mortality. I could update this with older layers where mortality already occurred.

The remaining layers represent values and resources. More can be added if need be. Please email [email protected] if you value critical layers are missing or if you have any questions.