Medicine Bow Routt National Forest
Medicine Bow Routt National ForestA wildfire analysis Richard
Treanor UMASS boston
Why this project?Medicine Bow Routt National Forest is a large
collection of forest lands located in Colorado and Wyoming. I will
be doing an internship as a Wildland Firefighter at Medicine Bow
this Summer and I wanted to analyze the history of forest fires in
the area, see their impact, and determine the likelihood of
encountering a substantial fire this Summer.
MethodologyI began by creating a map and geodatabase, initially
adding county maps of Wyoming and Colorado, as well as a map of
National Forests which I clipped down to show only Medicine Bow and
exported as a feature class. I then created a 25 mile buffer around
park lands to get a better representation of the region. I was then
able to find all wildfire events for the year 1980-2013. I trimmed
that data to my buffer, and created a feature class of all fires
greater than ten acres in size. For further graphical
representation, I added a hillshade raster layer. I then created a
time-lapse of fires per year.For further analysis, I added data
from the National Drought Center and clipped it to the forest
vicinity to show current drought conditions in the area, and
calculated it by size. Finally, I added census tracks and created a
feature class of those who are intersecting the forest vicinity, to
gain an understanding of the population at risk when wildfires
occur in the region.
Fire HistoryThe area around Medicine Bow Routt National Forest
experienced 6,139 fires which burned a minimum of ten acres each in
the years between 1980 and 2013. Thats an average of around 180
substantial fires per year, and the trend is increasing.
Fire History
Area and PopulationThe vicinity of Medicine Bow Routt National
Forest is home to 412,033 people as of the 2010 census, and the
forest attracts nearly a million visitors per year. The total area
of the vicinity is 39,859 square miles.
Drought Conditions
15940 square miles, 41% of the vicinitys 38,859 square miles is
currently experiencing drought conditions ranging from Abnormally
Dry to Severe Drought.
ResultsThe area where I will be working generally experiences a
large amount of fires annually. It is currently experiencing
drought conditions in some areas, and it is highly likely that
fires will occur this season. If a large fire breaks out, it could
affect many of the over 400,000 people living there or the over
900,000 visitors it receives annually.
