Glacier National Park Fire Atlas

Project details
Glacier National Park (GNP) has traditionally gathered and stored information on fires in the Park in various formats and in various places. Historically, the Park collected fire data in a single-file system that was redundant, used a single "master" source not maintained during the incident, and that was updated only after the end of fire season. The National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis (NCLFA) worked with the Park staff to design and develop an geodatabase that models the Park's complete fire history -- a fire atlas. This newly designed geodatabase has:

• Spatial and non-spatial data in the same database
• Simultaneous entry of the spatial component (point location) of the fire and fire information
• Interface for users with the appropriate permissions to update fire information
• Sophisticated rules and relationships between data objects

The Park fire staff provided NCLFA with fire data: 1970-2003 fire points; 1970-2003 fire polygons; FIRESUM data list (previous non-spatial fire history archive in a DOS-based program). GNP GIS staff provided: 1910-1969 fire points; 1970-2003 fire points; 1970-2003 fire polygons. NCLFA compared each record manually and the FIRESUM data list was updated to reflect most accurate and complete data. The resulting Fire Atlas geodatabase incorporates fire points (ignition/report point), final fire perimeters, and attributes for each fire in the Park from 1910 to 2003. The NCLFA also created a custom ArcGIS toolbar specifically for populating and maniupluating data within the Fire Atlas geodatabase.

Project development
Glacier National Park (GNP) fire managers are required to input, update, and maintain fire information in multiple local and national databases.  This information (data) is also integrated into various decision support models, some of which produce outputs that need to be reintegrated into the data stream. 

Project application
Finally, the fire atlas geodatabase will provide a scalable architecture for deploying GIS functionality outside of the park (e.g., web-based applications) and serve as a demonstration of this architecture to park managers of other disciplines.

Tool download: Fire Atlas tools and documentation 

Principal Investigators: Don Helmbrecht and Lee Macholz
Project Staff: Craig Comstock, Aden Fulford
Project Partners: National Park Service, Glacier National Park