Initial Publication Date: April 3, 2010
Week 8: Monitoring Fires
On This Page
Using AEJEE to Manage Forest Fires. Key Questions
Download Geographic Data About the Yellowstone Fires
Launch AEJEE and Open the YNP.axl Project File
Where in the World is Yellowstone National Park?
The Yellowstone National Park Region
Finding Facilities in Yellowstone National Park
Explore More if You Have Time
Resources
Download Geographic Data About the Yellowstone Fires
Launch AEJEE and Open the YNP.axl Project File
Where in the World is Yellowstone National Park?
The Yellowstone National Park Region
Finding Facilities in Yellowstone National Park
- Locate Towns and Campgrounds
- Search for a Feature You Might Want to Visit
- Buffer Old Faithful's Visitor Center for Facilities within 15 Miles
- Find Just the Campgrounds within Your Spatial Query
- Get a Sense of How the Fires Progressed
- Create and Execute a Query to Find Out the Number of Acres Burned by Major Fires
- Select the North Fork Fire?
- Buffer to Select Facilities that were within Two Miles of the Fire
- Find Out how Many Facilities were Threatened by the Fire
- Repeat this process on the Clover-Mist and Hellroaring Fires
Explore More if You Have Time
Resources
Using AEJEE to Manage Forest Fires
Key Investigation Questions:
- Where were the Yellowstone Fires of 1988?
- How was GIS used to assist in the management of these fires ?
- What is the primary cause of forest fire in Yellowstone National Park?
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Download Geographic Data About Yellowstone Fires
- Right-click (Win) or control-click (Mac) the link below to download the zipped file.
YellowstoneFireDataAE (Zip Archive 35.4MB Apr3 10) - Unzip the file. A folder called YellowstoneFireDataAE will be created.
- Move the YellowstoneFireDataAE folder to inside the Data folder of AEJEE.
(Path: ESRI/AEJEE/Data/YellowstoneFireDataAE.)
Launch AEJEE and Open the YNP.axl Project File
![AEJEE_logo](https://cdn.serc.carleton.edu/images/eet/earthquakes2/aejee_logo_100.jpg)
- Launch AEJEE by double-clicking its icon on your desktop or by clicking its icon in the Dock (Mac) or Launch Bar (Win).
- Choose File > Open, navigate to ESRI/AEJEE/Data/ YellowstoneFireData, select the file YNP.axl, and click Open.
- When the project opens, the base map displays latitude and longitude lines, outlines of countries of the world and the United States. The map highlights states in the northwestern region of the U.S.
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Where in the World is Yellowstone National Park?
- Zoom in to the NW States layer.
- Can you identify the 11 states in this layer?
Set the Map Tips
tool to label the names of the states as you hover over them.
- Return to the map. Hover over the any of the states with your cursor and the state will be labeled. Oregon is labeled in this example.
- Use the Zoom In
tool to take a closer look at Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding federal lands, such as the National Forest and National Wildlife Refuge. Observe the amount of National Forest surrounding Yellowstone National Park.
- Zoom in even closer on the Yellowstone National Park layer. Turn the layer on and off and hover over the boundary edges to find out which states the park occupies.
- Turn on the Yellowstone Towns layer and make it the active layer.
Choose the Identify
tool and click on each town to learn their names.
- Prefer a campground in the park? Then turn on the Yellowstone Facilities layer and find several campgrounds. Open the Attribute table, sort the Features in ascending order, and search for campgrounds.
- To select all the campgrounds, hold the shift key and click on all the campgrounds in the Attribute table. Notice that the campgrounds are now colored yellow on the map.
- How many campgrounds did you select?
- Close the Attributes of Yellowstone Facilities table.
- Create a query to locate the Old Faithful Visitor Center. top of page
- Use the Buffer
button to set a 15 mile buffer that selects facilities.
- Click Apply and OK. The map shows a 15 mile buffer around the Old Faithful Visitor Center, with facilities that are within the buffer showing as highlighted in yellow.
top of page - To see if any campgrounds are within a 15 mile radius of Old Faithful Visitor Center, open the Attribute Table of the Yellowstone Facilities layer and scroll over to the NAME field. Then sort the selected data to the top of the table.
- Look in the FEATURE field to see if any campgrounds were selected.
- What campground is within 15 miles of Old Faithful Visitor Center
- When you are done, click the Clear All Selections
button.
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The Historic 1988 Fires in Yellowstone National Park
The fires of 1988 were a result of a "perfect storm" of conditions. The summers of 1982-1987 were exceptionally wet, both suppressing fire and creating a build up of fuels. The summer of 1988 had been exceptionally warm and dry across the west. Normally, during summer months in this region the lands are in lush bloom, but this year the grass and other fuels were tinder dry. The forests of Yellowstone had not seen a fire of this magnitude in as many as 200 years, resulting in trees that were tightly clustered and ripe for the spread of a fire. Hot dry conditions combined with many dry lighting storms triggered the fires of '88. Wind accelerated it. By September 1988, fifty fires had engulfed the park.
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Get a sense of how the fires progressed
- Turn on the Historic Yellowstone Fire layer by checking the box to the left of its name.
- To investigate the dates of the fire, Open the Attribute table for the Historic Yellowstone Fire layer and sort the DATE field in ascending and descending order. NOTE: The date format is year–month-day. Search for the name of the first and last fire of 1988. The unburned areas have the date "1988". top of page
- First, set up a query to locate the North Fork Fire. Then use the Statistics button in the Query Builder window to investigate the extent of the North Fork Fire. Repeat this process for the other large fires including Clover-Mist, Mink, Storm Creek, and Hellroaring.
Create and execute a Query to find out the number of acres burned by the major fires
- Close the Statistics Results window.
- Click the Clear All Selections
button between investigations.
- What were the total numbers of acres burned for these fires?
- Estimate what percentage of Yellowstone National Park burned in 1988. top of page
Locate Yellowstone in the Region
Turn on the National Forest, Yellowstone National Park, Teton Natl Park, and Natl Wildlife Refuge layers.Yellowstone Park and Federal Lands
Notice the amount of federal land surrounding Yellowstone National Park. This open land is an important resource for human use and wildlife habitat. The National Forests of the Western United States serve many purposes. Not only do they contain extremely valuable lumber resources, they serve as important carbon sinks and provide habitat and safe refuge for many species of animals. Parks also serve as major corridors for animal migration. Over 75% of the Western United States is federal land of some type.
Focus on Finding Facilities in Yellowstone National Park
Planning a trip to see Yellowstone and its magnificent features? You would probably want to know more about the facilities in and around the park, such as where might you find a hotel outside of Yellowstone National Park or where to find a campground that is closest to the attractions that you have traveled to see. Use GIS techniques to find the towns close to the northern, western, and eastern boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.
top of pageLocate towns and campgrounds
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