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Name: Lee Macholz
Title: GIS Program Mgr.
Phone: 406-243-6777
Email:

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Lee Macholz is GIS Program Manager at the National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis, College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana

Bio:
Lee moved to Missoula, Mont. in 1980, and though she has lived in many other towns in many other states, she always comes back to Missoula.  Lee earned a bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Montana in 1998. She returned to UM several years later, earning a master's degree in Geography, 2004. The focus of her graduate study was GIS, specifically geospatial database design and development. Lee started with the NCLFA as a GIS Analyst in 2003 and her job was quickly steered towards geospatial application development. Lee took the position of GIS Program Manager for the NCLFA in July of 2006.

Expertise and Research Interests:
Lee's area of expertise is GIS and geodatabase design and development. The field of GIS is continually requiring the use of relational databases for storing and manipulating geographic data. Lee emphasizes the need for GIS specialists to engage in comprehensive database design processes in order to develop functional and scalable geodatabases.

Lee's additional research interests lie with the utilization of GIS in fire incident management. She has provided GIS support for fire at many levels; from incident management teams (from Type I to Wildland Fire Use), to mulit-agency commands, to research. Through her work at the NCLFA, she hopes to bring cutting-edge GIS technology to the fire community; thus improving the ability for GIS Specialists to provide GIS support as well as improving the manager's ability to ingest the resulting GIS products.