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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Kurtis J. Nelson; Joel A. Connot; Birgit Peterson; Charley Martin
Publication Date: 2013

The LANDFIRE Program provides comprehensive vegetation and fuel datasets for the entire United States. As with many large-scale ecological datasets, vegetation and landscape conditions must be updated periodically to account for disturbances, growth, and natural succession. The LANDFIRE Refresh effort was the first attempt to consistently update these products nationwide. It incorporated a combination of specific systematic improvements to the original LANDFIRE National data, remote sensing based disturbance detection methods, field collected disturbance information, vegetation growth and succession modeling, and vegetation transition processes. This resulted in the creation of two complete datasets for all 50 states: LANDFIRE Refresh 2001, which includes the systematic improvements, and LANDFIRE Refresh 2008, which includes the disturbance and succession updates to the vegetation and fuel data. The new datasets are comparable for studying landscape changes in vegetation type and structure over a decadal period, and provide the most recent characterization of fuel conditions across the country. The applicability of the new layers is discussed and the effects of using the new fuel datasets are demonstrated through a fire behavior modeling exercise using the 2011 Wallow Fire in eastern Arizona as an example.

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Citation: Nelson, Kurtis J.; Connot, Joel A.; Peterson, Birgit; Martin, Charley. 2013. The landfire refresh strategy: updating the national dataset. Fire Ecology 9(2):80-101.

Cataloging Information

Topics:
Fire Behavior    Fuels    Intelligence    Mapping    Models
Regions:
Alaska    California    Eastern    Great Basin    Hawaii    Northern Rockies    Northwest    Rocky Mountain    Southern    Southwest    National
Keywords:
  • change detection
  • computer programs
  • fire behavior modeling
  • fire case histories
  • fire management
  • fire regimes
  • fuel management
  • fuel mapping
  • LANDFIRE
  • LANDFIRE
  • MIICA
  • Refresh
  • remote sensing
  • remote sensing
  • succession
  • VCT - Vegetation Change Tracker
  • vegetation surveys
  • vegetation transition
  • Wallow Fire
  • wildfires
Tall Timbers Record Number: 28931Location Status: Not in fileCall Number: AvailableAbstract Status: Fair use, Okay, Reproduced by permission
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 51925

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.