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Fire Danger Forecast

In a joint effort between the USGS and the U.S. Forest Service, the Fire Danger Forecasting Project focuses on research and development of digital map products suited for monitoring and forecasting fire potential within the conterminous U.S.

Fire Danger Forecasting utilizes a combination of satellite-derived vegetation indices, various biogeophysical variables, and weather information to produce 7-day forecast products for fire potential index, large fire probability, and fire spread probability.  

News

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Fire Science Critical for Combating Wildfires Out West

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EROS Upgrades Fire Danger Forecast Mapping Tools

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USGS Hazard Science – Understanding the Risks is Key to Preparedness

Publications

Forecasting distribution of numbers of large fires

Systems to estimate forest fire potential commonly utilize one or more indexes that relate to expected fire behavior; however they indicate neither the chance that a large fire will occur, nor the expected number of large fires. That is, they do not quantify the probabilistic nature of fire danger. In this work we use large fire occurrence information from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity pr
Authors
Jeffery C. Eidenshink, Haiganoush K. Preisler, Stephen Howard, Robert E. Burgan

United States Geological Survey fire science: Fire danger monitoring and forecasting

Each day, the U.S. Geological Survey produces 7-day forecasts for all Federal lands of the distributions of number of ignitions, number of fires above a given size, and conditional probabilities of fires growing larger than a specified size. The large fire probability map is an estimate of the likelihood that ignitions will become large fires. The large fire forecast map is a probability estimate
Authors
Jeff C. Eidenshink, Stephen M. Howard

Forecasting distributions of large federal-lands fires utilizing satellite and gridded weather information

The current study presents a statistical model for assessing the skill of fire danger indices and for forecasting the distribution of the expected numbers of large fires over a given region and for the upcoming week. The procedure permits development of daily maps that forecast, for the forthcoming week and within federal lands, percentiles of the distributions of (i) number of ignitions; (ii) num
Authors
H.K. Preisler, R.E. Burgan, J.C. Eidenshink, Jacqueline M. Klaver, R. W. Klaver

Science

Forest Ecology

In various universities, many of our Units are situated in schools, divisions, or colleges of forestry, ecology, natural resources, and life sciences. Forest ecology is the study of plants, animals, and ecosystems, and the interconnected processes in forests. Our forest ecologists lead research and teach courses on prescribed fire, chronic wasting disease in deer, white-nose syndrome in bats...
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Forest Ecology

In various universities, many of our Units are situated in schools, divisions, or colleges of forestry, ecology, natural resources, and life sciences. Forest ecology is the study of plants, animals, and ecosystems, and the interconnected processes in forests. Our forest ecologists lead research and teach courses on prescribed fire, chronic wasting disease in deer, white-nose syndrome in bats...
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Fire Danger Forecast

USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), in conjunction with the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest (PSW) Region, has developed several new products for understanding and forecasting the probability of large wildland fires on all land in the conterminous U.S.
link

Fire Danger Forecast

USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS), in conjunction with the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest (PSW) Region, has developed several new products for understanding and forecasting the probability of large wildland fires on all land in the conterminous U.S.
Learn More