A Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity

Ken Brewer,Stephen Howard,Jeff Eidenshink,Zhi-Liang Zhu,Brad Quayle,Brian Schwind

doi:10.4996/fireecology.0301003

Abstract

Elected officials and leaders of environmental agencies need information about the effects of large wildfires in order to set policy and make management decisions. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), which implements and coordinates the National Fire Plan (NFP) and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies (National Fire Plan 2004), adopted a strategy to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA). One component of this strategy is to assess the environmental impacts of large wildland fires and identify the trends of burn severity on all lands across the United States. To that end, WFLC has sponsored a six-year project, Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), which requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA-FS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to map and assess the burn severity for all large current and historical fires. Using Landsat data and the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm, the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and USDA-FS Remote Sensing Applications Center will map burn severity of all fires since 1984 greater than 202 ha (500 ac) in the east, and 404 ha (1,000 ac) in the west. The number of historical fires from this period combined with current fires occurring during the course of the project will exceed 9,000. The MTBS project will generate burn severity data, maps, and reports, which will be available for use at local, state, and national levels to evaluate trends in burn severity and help develop and assess the effectiveness of land management decisions. Additionally, the information developed will provide a baseline from which to monitor the recovery and health of fire-affected landscapes over time. Spatial and tabular data quantifying burn severity will augment existing information used to estimate risk associated with a range of current and future resource threats. The annual report of 2004 fires has been completed. All data and results will be distributed to the public on a Web site.

Highlights

Project BackgroundConsistent geospatial information characterizing the effects of large wildland fires does not exist for lands within the conterminous United States, Alaska, and Hawaii
The Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), a national-level interagency body with responsibility for implementing and coordinating the National Fire Plan (NFP) and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies, has adopted a strategy to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA)
Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and ETM+ data provide the longest consistent record of relatively high spatial and spectral resolution data for mapping fire severity. Does this record enable the mapping of historical fire severity, it facilitates the use of time-series approaches for characterizing post-fire effects

Summary

Introduction

Project BackgroundConsistent geospatial information characterizing the effects of large wildland fires does not exist for lands within the conterminous United States, Alaska, and Hawaii. Changing trends in fire frequency, severity, and size create a need to acquire data and develop information that can establish a baseline for trend analysis and enable scientists to look at recent historical shifts in post-fire characteristics of burned lands. There is a need to understand the impacts of fire and resource management policies on fire occurrence and severity. These needs are recognized across agencies and at several levels within land management organizations. The general public is increasingly exposed to information suggesting that increases in uncharacteristic fire behavior have been caused in part by past land management practices. It can be assumed that public interest in current and future fire policy will increase

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