LANDFIRE Fire Regime Groups - Idaho, USA

Jul 28, 2011
Description:
Broad-scale alterations of historical fire regimes and vegetation dynamics have occurred in many landscapes in the U.S. through the combined influence of land management practices, fire exclusion, ungulate herbivory, insect and disease outbreaks, climate change, and invasion of non-native plant species. The LANDFIRE Project produces maps of historical fire regimes and vegetation conditions using the disturbance dynamics model VDDT. The LANDFIRE Project also produces maps of current vegetation and measurements of current vegetation departure from simulated historical reference conditions. These maps support fire and landscape management planning outlined in the goals of the National Fire Plan, Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy, and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.Data Summary:The Fire Regime Groups layer characterizes the presumed historical fire regimes within landscapes based on interactions between vegetation dynamics, fire spread, fire effects, and spatial context (Hann and others 2004). Fire regime group definitions have been altered from previous applications (Hann & Bunnell 2001; Schmidt and others 2002; Wildland Fire Communicator's Guide) to best approximate the definitions outlined in the Interagency FRCC Guidebook (Hann and others 2004). These definitions were refined to create discrete, mutually exclusive criteria. This layer is created by linking the BpS Group attribute in the BpS layer with the Refresh Model Tracker (RMT) data and assigning the Fire Regime Group attribute. This geospatial product should display a reasonable approximation of Fire Regime Group, as documented in the Refresh Model Tracker.The Historical Fire Regime Groups data layer categorizes simulated mean fire return intervals and fire severities into five fire regimes defined in the Interagency Fire Regime Condition Class Guidebook (Hann et al. 2004). The classes are defined as follows:Fire Regime I: 0 to 35 year frequency, low to mixed severityFire Regime II: 0 to 35 year frequency, replacement severityFire Regime III: 35 to 200 year frequency, low to mixed severityFire Regime IV: 35 to 200 year frequency, replacement severityFire Regime V: 200+ year frequency, any severityAdditional data layer values were included to represent Water (111), Snow / Ice (112), Barren (131), and Sparsely Vegetated (132). Vegetated areas that never burned during the simulations were included in the category "Indeterminate Fire Regime Characteristics" (133); these vegetation types either had no defined fire behavior or had extremely low probabilities of fire ignition.Hann, W.. A. Shlisky, D. Havlina, K. Schon, S. Barrett, T. DeMeo, K. Pohl, J. Menakis, D. Hamilton, J. Jones, and M. Levesque. 2004. Interagency Fire Regime Condition Class Guidebook. Interagency and The Nature Conservancy fire regime condition class website. USDA Forest Service, US Department of the Interior, The Nature Conservancy, and Systems for Environmental Management. www.frcc.gov
Data Provided By:
Wildland Fire Science, Earth Resources Observation and Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey
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Conservation Biology Institute

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