USFS/State and Private Forestry and USGS Alaska Geographic Science Office

Forest Health Monitoring Clearinghouse

Table of Contents

Available Datasets Project Description Related Sites for Further Info (partial list) Interactive Map Server
  (Currently unavailable, beta software deactivated).
This Web page was updated in May, 2004. The new and updated datasets are marked with the or icons. All datasets are available, but the full metadata files may not be complete. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or datasets to contribute, please contact the page owner.

Project Description


Introduction

The objective of this project is to develop a spatial resource data base of forest health related information for use by Alaska land managers and the science community. Alaska has over 129 million acres of forest land, yet the state is virtually inaccessible with less than 4000 miles of roads and ownership intermixed in large blocks. These facts make coordinated information gathering and sharing difficult. However, Alaska has many positive aspects for coordinated information sharing including excellent working relationships among Federal and state agencies and major land owners. Currently many land managing agencies and owners are creating GIS data bases. These efforts are to be linked and built upon to further enhance the data base for all users.

Data Availability

The site will provide a comprehensive geospatial framework for forest health monitoring in Alaska. The site will be a central location for providing insect, disease and other pertinent forest resource information needed to address Alaska's changing forest conditions. A number of agencies have contributed data to this site, including the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Division of Forestry, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Alaska Fire Service (AFS) of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The data meet FGDC meta-data standards, and is managed at appropriate scales to provide useful projection, map products, and analysis output to Alaska land managers and researchers. If you have related or additional datasets appropriate for this site, please contact Michael Fleming. Contributions of data or links are welcome.

For each dataset, some type of reference information is given, either a [Link] to an information page by the contributing agency, a reference publication for the data, and/or a contact for questions on the specific dataset. A [Metadata] button is available to view the metadata file. A short summary of the metadata, usually just one page, is available as a ASCII file [Metatxt] for some datasets. A small quicklook image is also available for some datasets using the [GIF] button. The datasets are either raster or vector format, depending on how they were developed. Most vector datasets are available, with projection information, in both [Shape] (.SHP) and [ARCExport] (.e00) formats. The raster datasets are available in basic image band interleave by line [.BIL] and/or [GRIDExport] (.e00) formats. The raster datasets contain all necessary image-related files to be ingested, with georeferencing, by ARC/GRID and LAS, or can be read by almost image processing software packages. Most data files have been compressed with gzip to facilitate data transfer.

Downloading Information

To retrieve via ftp the dataset for a variable, select the appropriate [Format] button. For each variable, the format (raster or vector), data type (byte or integer) and approximate size when compressed is given. Those who have problems downloading the data, or questions about the data, contact the Web Master.


Available Datasets

Most datasets are available for the entire forested area, if not almost complete coverage of the state of Alaska. Unless otherwise stated, all datasets are statewide coverages (except the western end of the Aleutian Islands) and are in a standard statewide Albers Equal Area Projection. Raster datasets are at a resolution of 1km, with each grid 1992 lines by 2512 samples. Vector data resolution is dependent on the data source.

Related Sites for Further Information

Other sites with information and/or data relative to this project.


Federal Agencies

State and Local

Alaska Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
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