WWETAC Projects
Project Title: National environmental threat assessment maps
Principal Investigator: Ken Brewer, USDA Forest Service, Remote Sensing Applications Center, Salt Lake City, UT
kbrewer[at]fs.fed.us
Collaborators: Terry Shaw, USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS), Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center, Prineville, OR; Bill Hargrove, USDA-FS, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, Asheville, NC; Eric Smith, USDA-FS Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team, Fort Collins, CO; Ron Neilson, USDA-FS Pacific Northwest Research Station, Corvallis, OR
Key Issues/Problems Addressed:
Extensive data exist regarding multiple environmental threats on a national scale, yet these wide-ranging data are often not in a relevant format for strategic decision-making. Accessible geographically comprehensive and spatially explicit data (i.e., maps) are needed to aid integrated approaches to multi-level strategic forest planning.
Setting and Approach:
Existing geospatial products were adapted to create a set of environmental threat maps on a national scale. Analysis was limited to forested areas on the 48 contiguous states. Available geospatial datasets used for threat mapping included: insect & disease risk, wildland fire potential, and road density. Mapping efforts explored these three threats and assessed cumulative threat variables. These variables were summarized according to three geographic units: county, watershed and EMAP hexagon (Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program).
Key Findings:
A lack of continuous, nationally consistent datasets remains a limiting factor in generating accurate national threat assessment maps.
Impacts/Applications:
A preliminary assembly of consistent/continuous nationwide data sets and sample map analyses of joint threat assessments were developed and made available for environmental threat analyses.
WWETAC Project ID: FY08TS45
