State Reports - Montana Montana Gap Analysis began in 1991 and is slated for completion in mid-1998. A land cover map of western Montana at 2 ha MMU was completed in March 1996; since that time, we have made minor updates to improve mapping of cover types like burns, mines, and urban areas. Meanwhile, work has focused on eastern Montana where we have 19 TM scenes to be processed. The first stage of our process, an unsupervised classification/merge to delineate polygon boundaries, has been completed for all scenes. Ground-truth data are being compiled from a number of sources, including the BIA, BLM, NRCS, USFS, USFWS, and MT-FWP, to be used in the second stage (assigning cover-type labels to polygons), which was finished in fall 1997. Next we will create a statewide land cover layer, recode cover types to simplify the classification scheme, and merge to 100 ha MMU, maintaining smaller mapping units where merited, as with riparian vegetation. Map accuracy will be assessed using a method that allows users to evaluate spatial differences in accuracy levels (currently under development). Once the land cover layer is done, we will immediately begin producing species distribution maps. We started with a list of 565 terrestrial vertebrates and whittled this down to about 410 species for which distributions will be constructed. Of these, habitat relationships have been documented for about two-thirds. Habitat databases are being built using FileMaker Pro software, which has proven very effective. Please contact us if you would like more information. To map known ranges, the Montana Natural Heritage Program populated EMAP hexagons for amphibians, reptiles, and mammals under subcontract to MT-GAP. For birds, we are using latilong-based distribution maps published by the Montana Bird Distribution Committee (1996) instead of hexagons. Although latilongs are roughly 12 times larger than hexagons, the cost of populating hexes for birds made this existing data source more palatable. Our greatest challenge in constructing species distributions may be the review phase, largely because of the short window between the completion of our land cover layer (and thus the beginning of our wildlife modeling) and the delivery date of our contract. To expedite the process, we hope to make our models and maps available to reviewers via the Web. The land stewardship layer is virtually complete and has been released for review. We used 100K ownership tiles prepared by the BLM as our starting point. Tiles were appended, edited, and extensively updated to include management-related features, then scored according to the 4-level protection scheme. To date, we have used the stewardship layer to calculate preliminary statistics on ownership and protection of western Montana’s cover types. |