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Combined wildland fire datasets for the United States and certain territories, 1800s-Present

February 7, 2022

First, we would like to thank the wildland fire advisory group. Their wisdom and guidance helped us build the dataset as it currently exists. This dataset is comprised of two different zip files. Zip File 1: The data within this zip file are composed of two wildland fire datasets. (1) A merged dataset consisting of 40 different wildfire and prescribed fire layers. The original 40 layers were all freely obtained from the internet or provided to the authors free of charge with permission to use them. The merged layers were altered to contain a consistent set of attributes including names, IDs, and dates. This raw merged dataset contains all original polygons many of which are duplicates of the same fire. This dataset also contains all the errors, inconsistencies, and other issues that caused some of the data to be excluded from the combined dataset. Care should be used when working with this dataset as individual records may contain errors that can be more easily identified in the combined dataset. (2) A combined wildland fire polygon dataset composed of both wildfires and prescribed fires ranging in years from mid 1800s to the present that was created by merging and dissolving fire information from 40 different original wildfire datasets to create one of the most comprehensive wildfire datasets available. Attributes describing fires that were reported in the various sources are also merged, including fire names, fire codes, fire IDs, fire dates, fire causes. Zip File 2: The fire polygons were turned into 30 meter rasters representing various summary counts: (a) count of all wildland fires that burned a pixel, (b) count of wildfires that burned a pixel, (c) the first year a wildfire burned a pixel, (d) the most recent year a wildfire burned a pixel, and (e) count of prescribed fires that burned a pixel.

Publication Year 2022
Title Combined wildland fire datasets for the United States and certain territories, 1800s-Present
DOI 10.5066/P9ZXGFY3
Authors Justin Welty, Michelle Jeffries
Product Type Data Release
Record Source USGS Digital Object Identifier Catalog
USGS Organization Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center (FRESC) Headquarters