Abstract
As the environmental crisis has worsened, the conditions required for large and uncommon wildfires have become more frequent (Grey, 2019). Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be an integral tool in wildfire management in a variety of ways (Lymberopoulos, 68, 1996). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the vegetation at risk of burning, during a historic fire, the Sprague Fire, in Glacier National Park, Montana. The total area at risk will then be compared to the actual area burned during the fire to test the accuracy of the vegetation burn risk assessment. GIS was used to create the vegetation risk analysis and to also create map representations of the risk analysis and the actual burned area. Important data used for the study includes, Glacier National Park Boundary, Anderson Fire Behavior Fuel Model 13 (FBFM13) LANDFIRE raster and description, Sprague Fire start location and Sprague Fire actual burn extent. It was determined that only 30% of the at-risk area actually burned in the fire. the study found an estimated average burn rate of the vegetation around the Sprague Fire was about 1.54 chains/hour or 30.78 meters/ hour. This means that the total area at risk of burn over the course of the 8 weeks was about 41,368.32 meters.