Draft Fire Frequency Indicator 2026 Blueprint [United States]
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open Data · 2026 Full Details
Tip: Check “Visit Source” link for download options.
Full Details
- Title
- Draft Fire Frequency Indicator 2026 Blueprint [United States]
- Description
- Input Data Southeast Blueprint 2025 extent 2024 Annual National Land Cover Database (NLCD): Land cover collection 1.1 Floodplain Inundation (Southeast Conservation Blueprint Indicator) U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Contemporary fire history metrics for the conterminous United States (1984-2024) (ver. 4.0, March 2025) 2020 LANDFIRE Biophysical Settings (BPS) [LF 2.2.0]; access the data Mapping Steps Begin with current departure from the historical fire regime. Add 1 to the LANDFIRE BPS historical fire return interval (FRI_ALLFIR). We add 1 because historical fire return intervals are an average, so a departure of only one year isn't a significant variation for most Southeastern ecosystems. Now test whether the USGS "time since last burn" metric (conus_1984_2024_TSLB.tif) is greater than the historic fire interval plus 1. For example, if an area is historically supposed to burn every 3 years, and was last burned 2 years ago, the time since last burn of 2 would be less than the historical fire interval of 3 plus 1. Classify as zero any pixel where the historical fire return interval is >20 years. These pixels receive the lowest indicator score because regular fire is less important in the function of these ecosystems and they are therefore not the focus of this indicator. Combine the current departure from historical fire regime calculated above with the longest fire-free interval from the USGS data (conus_1984_2024_LFFI) to generate the indicator categories as shown below. While the previous step assesses whether an area currently matches its historical fire regime, this step considers whether an area was burned at least once every 20 years in the recent past (between 1984 and 2024). Rebuild the 2024 NLCD raster attribute table and calculate statistics. This fixes ESRI software problems with reclassifying based on land cover types. Reclassify to a value of 0 the burned areas that are most likely to be false positives. Assign a value of 0 to pixels classified in the 2024 NLCD as one of the following landcover types: Open water (11), all urban (21, 22, 23, 24), barren (31), and cultivated crops (82). Fire in these pixels was often either not natural or likely misclassified. Clusters of pixels in barren landcover were often industrial sites and quarries. Assign a value of 0 to floodplain inundation indicator categories with likely misclassifications: "2 = inundation index of 91-100 (persistent inundation)", "3 = inundation index of 6-20 (regular inundation)", and "4 = inundation index of 21-90 (frequent inundation)". Inundated vegetation is often misclassified as burned area since they have similar spectral signatures in remote sensing. As a final step, clip to the spatial extent of Southeast Blueprint 2026. Final indicator values Indicator values are assigned as follows: 4 = Currently in historical fire regime and had regular fire from 1984-2024 (fire at least every 20 years) 3 = Currently in historical fire regime but lacked regular fire from 1984-2024 (>20 years without fire) 2 = Currently not in historical fire regime but had regular fire from 1984-2024 (fire at least every 20 years) 1 = Currently not in historical fire regime and lacked regular fire from 1984-2024 (>20 years without fire) 0 = Urban, row crop, or not a fire-adapted ecosystem (>20-year fire regime) Known Issues The Landsat-based fire history metrics overestimate fire frequency in open areas with wet soils. Wet soils can be much darker than dry soils and may be misclassified as burned areas. This misclassification was improved by removing areas classified as cultivated crops. A mask built on floodplain inundation frequency was also used to reduce misclassifications. The Landsat-based fire history metrics underestimate fire frequency in places with major impediments to burned area detection/mapping. Impediments include rapid green-up following a burn, cloud cover and shadows obscuring burn signatures, difficulty detecting or differentiating a low intensity burn signature beneath tree canopies, and the satellite product resolution often being too coarse to capture fine-scale differences or small burns.
- Creator
- U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
- Publisher
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open Data
- Temporal Coverage
- 2026
- Date Issued
- 2026-03-02
- Rights
- The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) shall not be held liable for improper or incorrect use of the data described and/or contained herein. This is a draft version of the compiled data generated for the purpose of review and is in no way to be considered a final publishable version of the data represented.
- Access Rights
- Public
- Format
- ArcGIS ImageMapLayer
- Language
- English
- Date Added
- March 09, 2026
- Provenance Statement
- The metadata for this resource was last retrieved from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open Data on 2026-03-09.
Cite and Reference
-
Citation
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (2026). Draft Fire Frequency Indicator 2026 Blueprint [United States]. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Open Data. https://gis-fws.opendata.arcgis.com/content/fws::draft-fire-frequency-indicator-2026-blueprint (web service) -
BTAA Geoportal Link
