National Park Service Thematic Burn Severity Mosaic in 1996 (ver. 8.0, August 2024)
Dates
Publication Date
2022-09-06
Time Period
1996
Last Revision
2024-08-21
Citation
U.S. Geological Survey, USDA Forest Service, and Nelson, K., 2022, Burn Severity Portal, a clearing house of fire severity and extent information (ver. 8.0, August 2024): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P97UMU6K.
Summary
The National Park Service (NPS) requests burn severity assessments through an agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to be completed by analysts with the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) Program. The MTBS Program assesses the frequency, extent, and magnitude (size and severity) of all large wildland fires (wildfires and prescribed fires) in the conterminous United States (CONUS), Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico for the period 1984 and beyond. All fires reported as greater than 1,000 acres in the western U.S. and greater than 500 acres in the eastern U.S. are mapped across all ownerships. MTBS produces a series of geospatial and tabular data for analysis at a range of spatial, temporal, and thematic scales and are [...]
Summary
The National Park Service (NPS) requests burn severity assessments through an agreement with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to be completed by analysts with the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) Program. The MTBS Program assesses the frequency, extent, and magnitude (size and severity) of all large wildland fires (wildfires and prescribed fires) in the conterminous United States (CONUS), Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico for the period 1984 and beyond. All fires reported as greater than 1,000 acres in the western U.S. and greater than 500 acres in the eastern U.S. are mapped across all ownerships. MTBS produces a series of geospatial and tabular data for analysis at a range of spatial, temporal, and thematic scales and are intended to meet a variety of information needs that require consistent data about fire effects through space and time.This map layer is a thematic raster image of burn severity classes for all inventoried fires occurring in CONUS during calendar year 1996. Fires omitted from this mapped inventory are those where suitable satellite imagery was not available or fires which were not discernable from available imagery.
The data generated by MTBS will be used to identify national trends in burn severity, providing information necessary to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire Plan and Healthy Forests Restoration Act. MTBS is sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), a multi-agency oversight group responsible for implementing and coordinating the National Fire Plan and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies. The MTBS project objective is to provide consistent, 30-meter spatial resolution burn severity data and burned area delineations that will serve four primary user groups including: 1. National policies and policy makers such as the National Fire Plan and WFLC which require information about long-term trends in burn severity and recent burn severity impacts within vegetation types, fuel models, condition classes, and land management activities. 2. Field management units that benefit from mid to broad scale GIS-ready maps and data for pre- and post-fire assessment and monitoring. Field units that require finer scale burn severity data will also benefit from increased efficiency, reduced costs, and data consistency by starting with MTBS data. 3. Existing databases from other comparably scaled programs, such as Fire Regime and Condition Class (FRCC) within LANDFIRE, that will benefit from MTBS data for validation and updating of geospatial data sets. 4. Academic and government agency research entities interested in fire severity data over significant geographic and temporal extents.
