Regularly Burned Habitat
This layer is one of the South Atlantic LCC indicators in the pine woodland, savanna and prairie ecosystem. It captures acres of fire-maintained, open canopy pine and prairie habitat.
Reason for Selection
This indicator represents the overall structure and condition of the habitat, is regularly monitored, and is widely used and understood by diverse partners. LANDFIRE is regularly updated.
Input Data
-- Data from the LANDFIRE program (also known as the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools) were used to quantify fire distribution. LANDFIRE is a cooperative project from The Nature Conservancy, the USDA Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and other agencies. Specifically, vegetation disturbance data for 1999–2010 derived from Landsat satellite imagery, local agency data contributions, and ancillary data (Ryan and Opperman 2013, Vogelmann et al. 2011).
-- 2011 National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Used to define urban areas as described in mapping steps
Mapping Steps
Indicators that have not changed since Blueprint 2.0 were initially computed, or in the case of existing data, resampled to 1 ha spatial resolution using the nearest neighbor method. For computational reasons, we then used the Spatial Analyst-Aggregate function to rescale the resolution to 200 m. The aggregate function avoided loss of detail by taking the maximum value of each cell in the conversion (e.g., species presence).
1) From the disturbance data, we only used disturbances from fires, which excluded mechanical, chemical, and unknown disturbances.
2) The Spatial Analyst-Aggregate (maximum) function was used to rescale data to a 1 km resolution.
3) From the 1 km grid size, we then removed all areas classified as human development in the 2011 NLCD (100 m resolution; classifications categories 21-24) and resampled the data to 200 m resolution to be consistent with other data sources. The data were classified as follows:
0 = Not recently burned or not open canopy
1 = Recently burned open canopy
Defining the Spatial Extent of Ecosystems
This indicator has been clipped to the pine and prairie ecosystem. Visit the Blueprint 2.0 ecosystem maps page for an explanation of how each ecosystem’s spatial extent is defined.
Known Issues
-- Data used only depict fires from 1999-2010 and do not fully capture the full fire history of the site. A site burned only once during this period still received the highest score.
-- Predictions are relatively coarse to account for underprediction of fire in moderate (30%-100%) canopy cover areas. This indicator tends to underpredict fire in the northern part of the South Atlantic region, as canopy cover is naturally higher there and therefore more likely to hide the presence of fire.
-- This indicator has not been expanded to cover areas newly added to pine and prairie with the improved ecosystem maps of Blueprint 2.1. These areas are classified as no data in this indicator. Most of these no data pixels are near the North Carolina coast in areas previously classified as “other” in Blueprint 2.0.
Indicator Overview
The South Atlantic ecosystem indicators serve as the South Atlantic LCC's metrics of success and drive the identification of priority areas for shared action in the Conservation Blueprint. To learn more about the indicators and how they are being used, please visit the indicator page. Check out the Blueprint page for more information on the development of the Blueprint, a living spatial plan to conserve our natural and cultural resources.
Literature Cited
Homer, C.G., Dewitz, J.A., Yang, L., Jin, S., Danielson, P., Xian, G., Coulston, J., Herold, N.D., Wickham, J.D., and Megown, K., 2015, Completion of the 2011 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States-Representing a decade of land cover change information. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 81, no. 5, p. 345-354.
Ryan, K.C., Opperman, T.S., 2013. LANDFIRE–A national vegetation/fuels data base for use in fuels treatment, restoration, and suppression planning. Forest Ecology and Management 294, 208-216.
Vogelmann, J.E., Kost, J.R., Tolk, B., Howard, S., Short, K., Chen, X., Huang, C., Pabst, K., Rollins, M.G., 2011. Monitoring landscape change for LANDFIRE using multi-temporal satellite imagery and ancillary data. Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, IEEE Journal of 4, 252-264.
