This dataset contains all National Forest Inventoried Roadless Areas (IRAs) for the Alaska Region (R10). 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.
Only the attributes Region, Forest, State, Name, and Category were retained from the original dataset. The Conservation Biology Institute added Acres and HA, which were calculated using the Alaska Albers Equal Area Projection. A second category field was also added containing a text description of the IRA category. Inclusion polygons not identified as roadless areas were removed from this dataset for clarity.
