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Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS)

By Drought November 2, 2016

The MTBS program is a collaborative partnership sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council to create natiionally consistent burn severity assessments of all large fires in the U.S. since 1984. From 1984 to 2014, the MTBS program has mapped 19,189 fires.

MTBS is sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC).  WFLC has responsibility for overseeing implementation and coordination of the National Fire Plan and has developed a monitoring framework to evaluate the effects and effectiveness of the ten year NFP implementation strategy.  Module 2.1 of this framework identifies the need to assess the environmental impacts of large wildland fires and identify trends in burn severity on all lands across the United States. In 2004, the GAO recommended the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management develop and implement comprehensive assessments of burn severity to provide consistent summary information characterizing the environmental effects of wildland fires and meet the requirements of WFLC.

MTBS also provides a set of high spatial and thematic resolution data consistently characterizing post-fire effects for every large fire in the US occurring from 1984 and beyond.  These data will be readily available to the scientific and operational communities for use in assessment and monitoring at a range of analysis scales through the MTBS web site.

  • Overview

    The MTBS program is a collaborative partnership sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council to create natiionally consistent burn severity assessments of all large fires in the U.S. since 1984. From 1984 to 2014, the MTBS program has mapped 19,189 fires.

    MTBS is sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC).  WFLC has responsibility for overseeing implementation and coordination of the National Fire Plan and has developed a monitoring framework to evaluate the effects and effectiveness of the ten year NFP implementation strategy.  Module 2.1 of this framework identifies the need to assess the environmental impacts of large wildland fires and identify trends in burn severity on all lands across the United States. In 2004, the GAO recommended the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management develop and implement comprehensive assessments of burn severity to provide consistent summary information characterizing the environmental effects of wildland fires and meet the requirements of WFLC.

    MTBS also provides a set of high spatial and thematic resolution data consistently characterizing post-fire effects for every large fire in the US occurring from 1984 and beyond.  These data will be readily available to the scientific and operational communities for use in assessment and monitoring at a range of analysis scales through the MTBS web site.