The federal government is developing a $40 million mapping program that can be used to identify communities most at risk of wildfire, but an environmental group has criticized the project because it contains ecological data but none on where people live.
Federal officials have said that the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project, or LANDFIRE, will improve their ability to choose high-priority fire-prevention projects.
A recent independent government audit cited the new project as one way to overcome problems with federal projects to reduce vegetation that can fuel wildfires. The report found that the Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first.
"Forest Service officials believe that LANDFIRE, a new system being developed, will provide more accurate nationwide data so that they can more accurately define and identify a community most at risk," the report said.
A shared project of the Forest Service and the Interior Department, LANDFIRE uses satellite imagery to map the land and software models to provide more detailed information about soil, vegetation, climate and fire history.
Partners on the project include the Forest Service's Missoula Fire Sciences Lab and the Nature Conservancy.
Although LANDFIRE will serve as a research tool to identify areas that may need ecological restoration and will provide a lot of good information, it will do nothing to identify communities that need protection, said Bo Wilmer, landscape scientist with the Wilderness Society.
"None of the information LANDFIRE relies on upon has anything to do with where people actually live," he said. "In terms of identifying communities most at risk, it's really missing the mark."
There's no consistent tool or method for identifying where those communities are and how to protect them, he added. "I don't think LANDFIRE can come through on what they're promising to deliver," he said.
The Wilderness Society has proposed an alternate plan that would use census data and overlay vegetation information from commonly available satellite imagery to map community fire-planning zones.
"We can't avoid fires burning in the summer, but we can avoid people's homes burning up, and that's where the agency should be focusing its approach," he said. "We don't have all the money in the world to treat acres where they don't have any impact."
LANDFIRE has been developed as a tool to identify vegetation conditions across the landscape and where those conditions pose threats, said Dave Tenny, Agriculture Department deputy undersecretary for natural resources and environment.
"You use that along with other data sets we have that show where communities are and you just lay one on top of the other," he said. "We already have that (population) information so we didn't have to generate that," Tenny said.
The system will allow agencies to determine how to most strategically defend a town against fire or lay out projects, he said.
Asked about the Wilderness Society's proposed alternate system, Tenny said he would be "surprised" if census data or other information employed by the group was not already being used by the government.
"I would highly doubt that it's as state of the art as LANDFIRE," he said.
In its audit report last month, the Inspector General Office of the Agriculture Department said that in the interim while LANDFIRE is being developed, the Forest Service "needs to develop a tool they can consistently use to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative strategies in meeting the goals of its hazardous fuels reduction program."
But Tenny said the inspector general's report looked at one small piece of the puzzle and didn't take into account work already under way in the interim. The department has been using the 10-year comprehensive strategy put together by the federal government, the Western Governors' Association, state foresters and counties.
The strategy calls for Community Wildfire Protection Plan to be collaboratively developed by federal, local and state governments along with other interested parties. "We continue to work with communities closely to decide where those highest-priority dollars should be spent," Tenny said.
Tenny also said the department is "very near" to completing a revision of the plan that will provide updated performance measures and make accountability more rigorous than in the past.
The inspector general report said LANDFIRE was designed and funded for use at regional level or above, and that the system would require additional funding before individual field units could use it for priority setting and decision making.
"This funding would be necessary in order to pay for the additional system modifications necessary to handle local level input and outputs and additional training for all field level staff to be able to use the system," the report said.
But Tenny said Congress has already provided the money for LANDFIRE and that the department won't have to ask for any additional money. Instead, regular future budget requests will include funds to train people.
"We can do it within the existing budgets that we have," he said.
Congress funded the project in 2002 and a prototype has already been completed for Montana and southwestern Utah, the report said.
The product will be available in stages for different parts of the country to use, with the entire program operational by 2009, Tenny said.Casper Star-Tribune
