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LANDFIRE (short for Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools) data are hosted at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center—which provides much of the data crunching expertise for the project. But LANDFIRE is a true interagency success story, with remarkable collaboration between the U.S. Departments of Interior and Agriculture and partnership with The Nature Conservancy. The LANDFIRE program has created far-reaching benefits for everyday Americans beyond its primary mission of fire management support.

“Every year, LANDFIRE improves. It’s one of the greatest success stories in our realm that I’ve ever been a part of. It’s like milk, gas, or electricity for us—it’s essential to what we do.”

—Rick Stratton of the USDA Forest Service

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The recently updated LANDFIRE website offers a detailed overview of everything the project has to offer today. It also contains the LANDFIRE Viewer, where data users have the ability to zoom in and select different datasets offered within the United States. The different categories work together to give fire managers a broader understanding of ground and vegetation conditions that is beneficial for fire prevention, suppression and even post-fire recovery.

“Disturbance affects what vegetation looks like and how it burns. As soon as a disturbance happens, we want to account for that because it will change our vegetation maps. Cover, height—even lifeform can change after a disturbance from trees to grasses and grow back to shrubs or saplings within a few years. All of those things not only provide different habitat, but also burn differently. So as soon as something happens on the landscape, we want to show that in the rest of our maps.”

—Inga La Puma, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service fire scientist and program lead with LANDFIRE

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Almost from the beginning, ecologists realized the potential value in LANDFIRE’s overlapping datasets. By 2006, for example, researchers studied grizzly bear density in northwest Montana using LANDFIRE data. Since then, study subjects have included pine ecosystems, urban growth, pharmaceuticals in the water systems, even the potential effects of a nuclear war! This widespread applicability in so many different areas of study earned LANDFIRE a Department of the Interior Environmental Dream Team award for 2017. 

“It can be used to evaluate the costs and benefits of different resource management scenarios, restoration scenarios. It can be used in ways that we never imagined, because when we built these datasets, they were not available. And now we have these 30-plus datasets that we can use in so many ways, like assessing vegetation condition, continent-wide. It was just not possible before LANDFIRE began. So yes, there are probably more non-fire applications of LANDFIRE program products than fire.”

—Jim Smith, LANDFIRE lead for The Nature Conservancy

Follow the links to explore some surprising uses of LANDFIRE data.

Continuous improvement is the hallmark of LANDFIRE’s 20 year history. Every data release has refinements, including those suggested by data users, that weren’t included in previous versions. But the two biggest benchmark advances after the initial release are the Remap (details below) that started in 2016 and was completed in 2021 and this year’s pinnacle moment: the first truly annual release of LANDFIRE data.

LANDFIRE REMAPS

In the early years, LANDFIRE relied upon base maps that had been created with limited data from 2001—a time before Landsat data were freely available at no cost. Advancements in technology, including access to high performance computers, improved imagery with the launch of Landsat 8, and years of experience led LANDFIRE team members to start planning for a Remap of those base maps in 2014.

Based on circa 2016 Landsat data, lidar and data from more than 1 million ground plots, the first updated maps were released in 2019. In addition to improved accuracy, more vegetation types were included and introduced a continuous range for vegetation cover, offering more precise estimates such as 15%, 16%, or 17% instead of categorical ranges like 10-20%.

LANDFIRE tailored data for its non-mainland states. The Remap for Hawaii, released in 2020, included more detail for “ruderal vegetation,” loosely defined as the non-native grasses and shrubs that carry the greatest fire risk in island landscapes. The 2022 Alaska Remap release extended the data for 90 kilometers across the state’s 1,357-mile land border with Canada. 

“It’s kind of like your wedding picture. When you first get married, you get that picture taken. That’s what LANDFIRE National did. Now it’s 15, 16, 17 years later and you need to take a new picture, because there are probably some kids that have been added and a few other things that have changed. LANDFIRE was at the point in time where we needed to take that new picture. Now, that new picture can start to show us what has changed and what’s important.”

—Henry Bastian, the LANDFIRE Business Lead for the Department of the Interior, about the LANDFIRE 2016 Remap.

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ANNUAL RELEASES

As with any natural disaster, it’s important land, fire and other resource managers have information as soon as possible to make timely decisions for impacted communities or regions. The advent of LANDFIRE annual releases is something fire managers have been longing for. 

It’s a happy coincidence that the first LANDFIRE annual release coincides with the project’s 20th anniversary.

“For our key user communities such as wildland fire, having timely information is critical,” said Jim Smith, LANDFIRE lead for The Nature Conservancy. “Knowing which areas have already experienced the wildland fire, or when that fire occurred and how severe it was, is really important to understanding the risks of additional fires and what the post-fire effects were and what the rehabilitation needs are. This kind of application would also apply to non-fire disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes.”

It was not an easy process, said Brenda Lundberg, the LANDFIRE data administrator, a KBR contractor for EROS since the LANDFIRE project started. “We’re constantly striving to produce the best possible products in a timely manner, and we have an amazing team that’s always looking for ways to incorporate new technology and improve our products,” she said. “Getting to the point where we could do annual updates took a lot of planning and effort.”

Deb Lissfelt, another contractor for KBR who works with Lundberg on the LANDFIRE reference team, noted that the technological advances are always informed by experience. “On the processing and ingesting data side, part of it is 20 years of familiarity with these data products between Brenda and me,” she said. “We’ve been looking at this data for years, and that’s helped us with our efficiency.” 

Check out these Eyes on Earth podcasts to learn more about LANDFIRE history!