LANDSAT

In an era of rapid land use changes and shifting climates, it is imperative that land managers and policymakers have actionable and current information available for decision processes. In this work, we seek to meet these needs through new data products and decision support tools built on digital soil mapping, new vegetation cover maps, agency inventory and monitoring data sets, and cutting-edge...

Through a collaborative effort with multiple state and federal agencies, university researchers, and individual stakeholders, we are producing a set of predictive seasonal habitat maps for greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus ) spanning the entirety of the species’ U.S. distribution. This is the largest habitat modeling effort of its kind for the species and uses a large, compiled...

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...

Landsat Collection 1 Level-3 Burned Area (BA) contains two acquisition-based raster data products that represent burn classification and burn probability. NOTE: Landsat Collection 1 data and products are no longer available to download from the USGS as of December 30, 2022. Landsat Collection 2 remains available. Please access the Landsat Collection 2 webpage below for information about Collection...

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.

Every year, wildfires devastate the landscapes of Southern California from Los Angeles to San Diego. How has a higher number of human-caused fires affected fire hazards and threats to resources? WERC’s Dr. Jon Keeley and collaborators are analyzing fire patterns across the state to help cities balance their management of fire hazards and natural resources.

Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) track critical attributes of the atmosphere, oceanic, and terrestrial systems over time-scales appropriate for analyzing their relationships with climate change. As part of a larger Climate Data Record (CDR) and ECV project, scientists at GECSC are leading the development and validation of the Burned Area ECV algorithm. This algorithm automatically extracts...

Debris flows are high-density slurries of water, rock fragments, soil, and mud that can have enormous destructive power. Wildfire can drastically increase the probability of debris flows in landscapes that have otherwise been stable. In 2010, the USGS developed the Cannon model to estimate postwildfire debris-flow probabilities and volumes in burned areas. In 2013, with the help of U.S. Forest...