Big Sky Conservation Institute

Click on the map below to link to interactive Wildland Urban Interface maps
of the National Forests in western Montana

Prioritizing Communities in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) of Western Montana

Here in western Montana, protecting homes and communities from wildfire has to be taken very seriously. We live and are surrounded by ecosystems, which have evolved with wildfire for thousands of years. These fires of yesteryear have shaped the way we see the vegetation on the land and always have. After almost a century of aggressive fire suppression and (in many areas) intensive logging by our land managers it is fire, which determines, what grows where and why. So now after years of throwing money to suppress wildfires, citizens, land managers, community leaders and politicians are now in the agreement that no matter how much suppression you try, how much logging you conduct, wildfire is here to stay!

This is only proven by the recent passing of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA), a part of the administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative (HFI). The number one purpose of the HFRA, which was signed into law by President Bush on December 3, 2003, is that it “reduce wildfire risk to communities, municipal water supplies, and other at-risk Federal land” (HFRA. sec.2. Purposes). Embodied in this language is the mandate for increased public awareness and participation at the local level. Additionally, HFRA, in conjunction with the National Fire Plan (NFP), “encourages” the development of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) (HFRA. Title I, sec. 101. (3)), in order that high-risk areas may first be identified and then prioritized for hazardous fuels reduction treatments. As an incentive for communities to prepare a CWPP, HFRA places priority on treatment areas that are identified in the plan. Even with the passage of the HFRA, funding for these pro-active measures (fuel treatments) are tight, and with numerous communities needing assistance, there simply will not be enough resources to go around.

Here at BSCI, we have taken the initiative to try and help citizens and planners in our region locate areas within our communities, which are at greatest risk to wildfire. Through the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we have delineated areas adjacent to federal lands in order to give the public a guide to where our money can be best spent to protect communities with our finite resources.

Mapping Methodology and Data Sources:

To prioritize communities in western Montana, we used data generated by the SILVAS Lab, Department of Forest Ecology and Management, University of Wisconsin-Madison in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service. The data they produced was done for the coterminous U.S. to map the Federal Register definition of WUI (66:751, 2001). They integrated the U.S. Census, housing densities from 2000 at the TIGER Block level, with ground conditions of the 1992 U.S.G.S. National Land Cover Data (Radeloff,V.C., R.B.Hammer, A.Treves and S.I. Stewart. 2003).

Due to Montana’s rural geography, we chose to focus are mapping efforts on the “intermix zones” delineated by the SILVAS Lab data. The intermix zone is area where lower housing densities meet or intermix with forest land vegetation which we found characterizes Montana’s true interface of concern.

We queried out all intermix Census Blocks (Low, Medium, and High) within a half mile of the Bitterroot, Lolo, Flathead and Kootenai National Forest. Then we simply buffered these Blocks by 1 mile to precisely show what federal lands could be prescribed for fuel treatment under the HFRA to better protect these communities.

When viewing our internet mapping service (IMS) for each National Forest in western Montana, you will find the intermix zones, with labels of housing density numbers and buffer rings set to 1 mile from the TIGER Block. Each ring is precisely a quarter mile marker from these locations.

Other data used for this project came from the U.S. Forest Service and the Montana Natural Resource Information Systems (NRIS) at www.nris.state.mt.us.

Click here for the BSCI Internet Map Server How To Guide.