Colorado Statewide Forest Resource Assessment

V. Priority Landscapes/Emphasis Areas forColoradoThe Colorado State Forest Service used 11 data layers and combined themaccording to the three national themes. The following four pages display thetheme maps. The percentages following each data layer represent the weightapplied to the layer.For Conserve Working Forest Landscapes, we combined three data layers,including Colorado Forest Legacy areas (44 percent), Colorado spatialanalysis project (34 percent) and projected change in degree of humanmodifi cation (22 percent).For the Protect Forests from Harm map, we used wildfi re susceptibility index(33 percent), wildfi re intensity index (40 percent), and insect and diseasemitigation potential (27 percent).Data used in the Enhance Public Benefits from Trees and Forests includedpotential for post-fi re erosion risk in watersheds of importance for drinkingwater (42 percent), habitat for imperiled species (18 percent), habitat foreconomically important species (10 percent), density of recreation opportunity(8 percent) and wildland-urban interface (22 percent).The fourth map is an aggregate of all theme inputs, which were equallyweighted.USFS national guidance allowed fl exibility for states to determine theappropriate data to use and the proper method to combine the data toidentify their important forest landscapes. Potentially unlimited numbers ofapproaches exist to combine the data. The CSFS chose this data combinationmethod for Colorado, as we believe it best represents the three nationalthemes.We look forward to improving the process and the results as new databecome available. The CSFS will maintain this assessment as a livingdocument, which will allow us to incorporate new information and make thatdata easily accessible on our website at http://csfs.colostate.edu.69