Fire Science

The sagebrush biome is one of the largest ecosystems in North America. Encompassing nearly one-third of the continental U.S., it provides critical resources for millions of Americans and a home for hundreds of plants and animal species in the West. Natural resource management in sagebrush ecosystems can be complex, and science can support management decisions by providing knowledge and tools to...

The USGS Southwest Biological Science Center is coordinating the Southwest Fire Innovation Landscape Network to prepare fire and natural resource managers for rapidly changing fire landscapes by conducting research and building science-management partnerships. The network develops advanced tools and technologies to assess fuel loads and the effectiveness of fuel treatments, understand wildfire...

LANDFIRE is a diverse product suite with countless uses that go beyond fire management. The program has now been providing this satellite data for 20 years.

What can you learn during an internship at the USGS EROS Center? A lot! Several interns talk about their experience working a summer internship at EROS.

LANDFIRE, a trusted source for fire-related data, has started releasing key information even faster.

Eyes on Earth is a podcast on remote sensing, Earth observation, land change and science, brought to you by the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. In this episode, we learn about the usefulness of ECOSTRESS data in examining predictors for wildfire burn patterns.

Landsat Collection 2 Level-3 Burned Area (BA) contains two acquisition-based raster data products that represent burn classification and burn probability.

EROS work on fire activity in the United States includes the creation of an atlas of fire perimeters for fires occurring on U.S. National Wildlife Refuges from 1984 through 2013. Fire Atlas perimeter data provide information to refuge managers as they plan land management activities for their units. EROS analysts use data provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which include a name...

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) is an interagency program whose goal is to consistently map the burn severity and extent of large fires across all lands of the United States from 1984 to present. This includes all fires 1,000 acres or greater in the western United States and 500 acres or greater in the eastern Unites States. The extent of coverage includes the continental U.S., Alaska...

EROS, alongside the USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC), offers rapid delivery of satellite imagery in the form of Burned Area Reflectance Classifications (BARC) and other data to the Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program.

There are no restrictions on the use of data received from the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center or NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), unless expressly identified prior to or at the time of receipt. Depending on the product source, we request that the following statements be used when citing, copying, or reprinting data:

Explore the world’s largest civilian collection of images of the Earth’s surface. Find satellite images and data, aerial photography, elevation and land cover datasets, digitized maps, and our Image Gallery collections.