U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey October 22, 2015 EROS Fire Science Understanding a Changing Earth

Topics  LANDFIRE  Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS)  Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER)  Fire Science Research Activities  Collaborators

What is LANDFIRE?

LANDFIRE Goals and Objective 1. Provide national-level comprehensive and consistent strategic geospatial data products and databases to support wildland fire and natural resource management, planning, research, analysis, and assessment 2. Produce repeatable, identifiable, mappable, and scalable data products 3. Supplement and assist modelling of fire behavior and effects 4. Improve collaboration between programs, data, and agencies for holistic wildland fire and natural resource management.

LANDFIRE Products  Reference  Contains data collected from public, government, and proprietary sources in order to inform the LANDFIRE mapping processes and update LANDFIRE products  Disturbance  Developed to help inform updates to LANDFIRE data to reflect change on the landscape caused by management activities and natural disturbance  Vegetation  Purpose is to support the creation of fuel and fire regimes data  Fuels  Describe the composition and characteristics of surface and canopy fuel

LANDFIRE Timeline  LF National  Product is based on 2001 data and is 15 years old  Updates for disturbances and successional growth models applied  Data needs to be refreshed  LF 2014  In implementation. Completes in CY 2016 – likely last update to LF National  LF 2015 Remap  Conceptually starts in CY 2016 and completes in CY 2018  On-going planning, LCMAP ARD’s

LANDFIRE Impacts  WFDSS: Wildland Fire Decision Support System  Strategic and tactical decisions for fire incidents  Fuel Layer Editing  Fire Behavior Analysis  LANDFIRE is the primary data source  Fsim: Fsim (Fire Simulator) is burn probability and conditional flame length simulator.  LANDFIRE is a fundamental part of fundamental part of the process. the process.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) Overview  Project is jointly implemented by USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC) and USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center  Consistently map the location, extent and burn severity of large fires on all lands in the United States since 1984  > 1,000 acres in the western United States  > 500 acres in the eastern United States  Over 19,000 historical fires mapped and available at:

MTBS: Remotely Sensed Change Detection Burn mapping products are based on Landsat data and the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR): Prefire Postfire dNBRBurn Severity LandsatNBR Difference Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) NBR = (NIR – SWIR) / (NIR + SWIR) dNBR = Pre NBR – Post NBR Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) 6/8/2005 6/14/2007

MTBS Impacts and Decision Support  Determine whether previous fires can act as fuel breaks for a current fire  Identify areas for vegetation rehabilitation  Identify areas that may have increased exotic species  Justify whether burn plan objectives for threatened/endangered species has been met  Determine whether vegetation has regrown back to pre-fire state  MTBS is input to LANDFIRE disturbance information

What is Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER)? Fast-Track Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation assessment - generally conducted immediately upon fire containment by interdisciplinary team Assess effects of the fire on the soil and watershed hydrologic function (Erosion and flood potential) for risks to: Life Property Long-term soil productivity Water quality Resources (timber, T&E species, cultural sites, etc.) Propose cost-effective treatments in Rehabilitation Plan within ~ 7 days

Related Benefits/Value of DOI Burn Mapping Activity  USGS Debris flow hazard prediction  Fire effects monitoring  Land Change assessments (invasives, erosion, cover change)  Quantitative infiltration models to predict post-wildfire infiltration and resulting runoff  International burn mapping assistance

Online Burn Mapping Request Page

Fire Science Research Activities  Using multiple sensors to inform burned area mapping and improve temporal accuracy  Make LIDAR more user friendly and available to the fire science community  Improving upon shrub and grassland mapping for fire applications Landsat derived potential burned areas (pink and orange) and active sensor (MODIS, GOES, and AVHRR) derived fire detections (purple) that inform the actual date of burn.

Collaborators  US Fish and Wildlife  National Park Service  USDA Forest Service  NASA  Texas Forest Service  University Collaborators  Bureau of Land Management  Bureau of Indian Affairs  Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium