Metadata for Montana Inventoried Roadless Areas, 2004

- Identification Information
- Data Quality Information
- Spatial Data Organization Information
- Spatial Reference Information
- Entity and Attribute Information
- Distribution Information
- Metadata Reference Information
- Download full XML Metadata

Identification Information:

Citation:
  Originator:
    USDA Forest Service - Geospatial Service and Technology Center (GSTC)
  Publication date: 01/06/2006
  Title: Montana Inventoried Roadless Areas, 2004
  Publication place: Montana State Library
  Publisher: Helena, MT
  Online linkage: ftp://ftp.geoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Data/Spatial/NonMSDI/Shapefiles/Roadless_2004.zip
  Browse graphic file name: ftp://ftp.geoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Documents/Maps/Thumbnails/20060106_492_thumb.jpg
  Browse graphic file description: Thumbnail image of Montana 2004 Roadless Area Inventory Status map
  Browse graphic file name: ftp://ftp.geoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Documents/Maps/Individual/20060106_492_2004_RoadlessInvStatus.pdf
  Browse graphic file description: Montana 2004 Roadless Area Inventory Status map
Abstract:
  This dataset contains all National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) in Montana or within one mile of Montana's boundary. It was selected from the National Inventoried Roadless Area data downloaded from the U.S. Forest Service at http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/feis/data/gis/coverages/index.shtml. Most of this metadata document is copied from the metadata available from the aformentioned web site.
  The IRA data was originally submitted to GSTC by all national forests through their Regional Offices for the Forest Service�s Roadless Area Conservation Initiative. The data was consolidated at the GSTC and used in the Draft Environment Impact Statement. Between the draft and final stages of the Environmental Impact Statement, the data was updated by the forests to reflect any corrections to Inventoried Roadless Areas that were based on their existing forest plan. The data was also supplemented to include Special Designated Area information and to include Inventoried Roadless Areas within Special Designated Areas. The data was resubmitted to the GSTC on July 21, 2000 for consolidation and the completed coverage was used in the Roadless Area Conservation Final Environmental Impact Statement.
  IRAs are based on completed forest plans, forest plans in revision where the agency has established an inventory (this information should be available in Appendix C of most forest plans), or other assessments that are completed and adopted by the agency. RARE II information was used in cases where a forest does not have a more current roadless inventory, which was established using RARE II information.
Purpose:
  The purpose of this spatial data set is to show where the Inventoried Roadless Areas are located. The EIS analysis team used this spatial data to assess the impacts of roadless area alternatives on Forest Service policies, use of the National Forests and the surrounding environment. It was used for analysis in combination with national characterization layers, such as ambient human population, forest mortality risk to insects and diseases, current land cover types, and others. All of these datasets include the entire lower 48 states, and are coarse resolution. The public also had a need to know where IRAs were located in their area and across the nation. The data was used to create a set of detailed maps published both on the web and in hardcopy form, (Volume2, Roadless Area Conservation EIS).
Time period of content:
  Beginning date: 12/03/1999
  Ending date: 08/02/2004
  Currentness reference: publication date
Status:
  Progress: Complete
Access constraints: None
Use constraints:
  User needs to exercise caution regarding the spatial accuracy of these data. The source scales can vary. External features cannot be expected to align. The National Forest Planning Record Documents (Appendix C), other assessments adopted by the USDA Forest Service, or RARE II documents, are ultimately the official version of inventoried roadless areas.
  The Montana State Library provides this product/service for informational purposes only. The Library did not produce it for, nor is it suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Consumers of this information should review or consult the primary data and information sources to ascertain the viability of the information for their purposes. The Library provides these data in good faith but does not represent or warrant its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness. In no event shall the Library be liable for any incorrect results or analysis; any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages to any party; or any lost profits arising out of or in connection with the use or the inability to use the data or the services provided. The Library makes these data and services available as a convenience to the public, and for no other purpose. The Library reserves the right to change or revise published data and/or services at any time.
Point of contact:
  Dan Thompson
  USDA Forest Service - GSTC
  2222 West 2300 South
  Salt Lake City, UT 84119
  Telephone: 801-975-3441
  E-Mail: dthompson01@fs.fed.us
  Contact instructions:
    This is the distribution point of contact from the Forest Service. See the Distribution Information section of this document for contact information for the State Library.

Back to Top

Data Quality Information:

Lineage:
  Source information:
    Originator:
      USDA Forest Service - Geospatial Service and Technology Center (GSTC)
    Publication date: 08/02/2004
    Title: National Inventoried Roadless Areas
    Publication place: Salt Lake City
    Publisher: U.S. Forest Service
    Other citation details:
      Originally published Sep 15 2000, updated Jan 7 2003 and Aug 2 2004.
    Online linkage: http://roadless.fs.fed.us/documents/feis/data/gis/coverages/index.shtml
  Process step:
    The IRA data was originally submitted to GSTC on December 3, 1999 for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The data was submitted in ARC/INFO export format (.e00), in most cases as individual national forest coverages, but in some cases together with other national forests. The original datasets submitted were derived from a variety of original source manuscripts, most IRA data had a scale of 1:24,000. Some datasets were of smaller scale, typically 1:126,720. Each national forest was originally compiled at a different time, from different source material, using various methods. Region 5 submitted one file, which included all national forests in that region (primarily the state of California). In these instances, individual coverages were extracted by national forest administrative unit, and edited separately. All data was imported, projected to Albers and audited to check for INFO item consistency. Unnecessary features were removed and label errors removed.
  Process step:
    Each national forest dataset was spatially edgematched to a national forest boundary dataset compiled at GSTC for this purpose, and attribute information was added or corrected. It was GSTC's intent to change the original data as little as possible, altering the geometry only as necessary to fit the National Forest Boundary coverage, and editing attributes only for consistency or where apparent errors occurred.
    Edgematched data to National Forest Boundary coverage by
    1) intersected the IRA and the NF boundary coverages using the UNION command with a fuzzy tolerance of 1.5 map units (meters)
    2) deleted polygons that extended beyond NF boundary as long as they appeared to be sliver polygons created by union
    3) deleted/absorbed polygons that did not extend to NF boundary by eliminating all interior polygons less than 5 acres in size that had no IRA category value or NF ownership status using ELIMINATE command
    4) merged remaining polygon undershoots using the MERGE command via manual editing
    5) conducted final quality assessment to check all work - this consisted of running acreage calculations for polygons before and after the edgematching process; all differences of 100 acres or greater were checked on screen and corrected if necessary; acreage calculations were run again after corrections were made to ensure there were no major changes (in some cases, changes were necessary after verifying with forest personnel that an error in the original data existed); a query was run on all coverages which resulted in a report showing frequency of polygons that had no ownership item and no IRA category - these were checked visually using hard copy maps and phone calls to forests, if necessary, to verify what the polygons in question were; all IRA coverages were also checked visually on the screen to make sure there were no additional errors.
  Process step:
    Regional coverages were created by first appending the completed individual national forest IRA coverages into administrative regional coverages, using the APPEND command with the polygon option. This resulted in seven regional coverages for Regions: 1 (Northern), 2 (Rocky Mountain), 3 (Southwestern), 4 (Intermountain), 5 (Pacific Southwest), 6 (Pacific Northwest), 8 (Southern), and 9 (Eastern). These seven regional coverages were then appended into the national coverage, again, using the APPEND command.
  Process step:
    The resulting national coverage was automatically edited, using the CLEAN command, with a fuzzy tolerance of 1.5 meters. This removed geometric errors, and rebuilt topology. The coverage was then reprojected from Albers to decimal degrees for consistency with all other coverages used for analysis work.
  Process step:
    Between the draft and final stages of the Environmental Impact Statement, the data was updated by the forests to reflect any corrections to Inventoried Roadless Areas that were based on their existing forest plan. The data was also updated to include Special Designated Area information and to include Inventoried Roadless Areas within Special Designated Areas. After these updates were made the data was resubmitted to the GSTC on July 21, 2000 for consolidation
  Process step:
    The final consolidation of the national IRA coverage was accomplished at the GSTC with the benefit of having one representative from each region to assist with quality control. All the completed regions were appended together into the national coverage and reprojected from Albers to decimal degrees for analysis and display in the Roadless Area Conservation Environmental Impact Statement. The IRAs only were selected from national coverage to make this dataset.
  Process step:
    On January 7, 2003, a technical correction to the IRA GIS data was performed by GSTC on behalf of the Gallatin National Forest. The technical correction complies with direction described in the Roadless Area Conservation Rule 294.11 and Interim Directive 1920-2001-1 section 1925.05.
  Process step:
    On August 2, 2004, a technical correction along the border of the Salmon-Challis and Sawtooth National Forests was performed by GSTC. This correction fixes a data consolidation error that went undetected during the construction of the IRA GIS dataset. A 37,000 acre section of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area was mistakenly combined with the Squaw Creek IRA. The technical correction restores these two features back to their original state. The technical correction complies with direction described in the Roadless Area Conservation Rule 294.11 and Interim Directive 1920-2001-1 section 1925.05.

Back to Top

Spatial Data Organization Information:

Point and vector object information:
  SDTS object type: G-polygon
    SDTS object count: 1498

Back to Top

Spatial Reference Information:

Horizontal coordinate system definition:
  Grid coordinate system name: State Plane Coordinate System
  SPCS zone identifier: 2500
  Lambert conformal conic:
  Standard parallel: 45.000000
  Standard parallel: 49.000000
  Longitude of central meridian: -109.500000
  Latitude of projection origin: 44.250000
  False easting: 600000.000000
  False northing: 0.000000
  Planar distance units: meters
  Geodetic model:
    Horizontal datum name: North American Datum of 1983
    Ellipsoid name: Geodetic Reference System 80
    Semi-major axis: 6378137.000000
    Denominator of flattening ratio: 298.257222

Back to Top

Entity and Attribute Information:

Entity type label: Roadless_2004.dbf
  Attribute label: FID
    Attribute definition: Shapefile sequence number
  Attribute label: Shape
    Attribute definition: Feature geometry
  Attribute label: AREA
    Attribute definition: Area of feature in square meters
  Attribute label: PERIMETER
    Attribute definition: Perimeter of feature in meters
  Attribute label: REGION
    Attribute definition: U.S. Forest Service Region Number
  Attribute label: FOREST
    Attribute definition: National Forest name
  Attribute label: STATE
    Attribute definition: State name
  Attribute label: NAME
    Attribute definition: Roadless Area name
  Attribute label: CATEGORY
    Attribute definition: Roadless Area Category

    Attribute Value | Definition of Attribute Value
    1B | Inventoried Roadless Areas where road construction and reconstruction is prohibited.
    1B-1 | Inventoried Roadless Areas that are recommended for wilderness designation in the forest plan and where road construction and reconstruction is prohibited.
    1C | 1C = Inventoried Roadless Areas where road construction and reconstruction is not prohibited.

  Attribute label: ACRES
    Attribute definition: Area of feature in acres

Back to Top

Distribution Information:

Distributor:
  Montana State Library
  PO Box 201800
  Helena, MT 59620-1800
  Telephone: 406-444-5354
  TDD/TTY telephone: 406-444-4799
  Fax: 406-444-0266
  E-Mail: geoinfo@mt.gov
Resource description: Downloadable Data
Distribution liability:
  The Montana State Library provides this product/service for informational purposes only. The Library did not produce it for, nor is it suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Consumers of this information should review or consult the primary data and information sources to ascertain the viability of the information for their purposes. The Library provides these data in good faith but does not represent or warrant its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness. In no event shall the Library be liable for any incorrect results or analysis; any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages to any party; or any lost profits arising out of or in connection with the use or the inability to use the data or the services provided. The Library makes these data and services available as a convenience to the public, and for no other purpose. The Library reserves the right to change or revise published data and/or services at any time.
Standard order process:
  Digital form:
    Format name: ESRI shapefile
    Online option:
    ftp://ftp.geoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Data/Spatial/NonMSDI/Shapefiles/Roadless_2004.zip

Back to Top

Metadata Reference Information:

Metadata date: 01/31/2014
Metadata review date: 04/17/2013
Metadata review date: 01/06/2006
Metadata contact:
  Montana State Library
  PO Box 201800
  Helena, MT 59620-1800
  Telephone: 406-444-5354
  TDD/TTY telephone: 406-444-4799
  Fax: 406-444-0266
  E-Mail: geoinfo@mt.gov

Back to Top