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<DIV class=articleTitle>A Fiery Legacy: USGS Assesses 26 Years of Wildland
Fires</DIV>
<DIV class=articleByLine>By Rebecca L. Johnson, SAIC, contractor to the U.S.
Geological Survey</DIV>
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<DIV class=articleCredit id=CreditBox>Photo by BLM-Idaho.</DIV>
<DIV class=articleCaption id=CaptionBox>The USGS-USDA Monitoring Trends in Burn
Severity project is mapping and analyzing the destructive impact of major
U.S.wildfires from 1984 to 2010. The project is part of a Wildland Fire
Leadership Council strategy to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire
Plan and the Healthy Forests Initiative.</DIV>
<DIV class=articleText><!-- findme -->
<P><B><O></O></B>Start with soaring summertime temperatures. Add a profusion of
parched landscapes. Season liberally with violent storms. And you have the
perfect recipe for potentially disastrous wildland fires.<O> </O>
<P>Jeff Eidenshink at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Center for Earth Resources
Observation and Science knows that recipe well. But while most of us merely
wonder or worry about where the next fire will strike, Eidenshink is part of a
scientific effort to assess the occurrence and effects of wildland fires in the
<ST1><ST1>United States</ST1></ST1> over time. The Monitoring Trends in Burn
Severity project is a six-year collaboration between USGS and the USDA Forest
Service to map and analyze the destructive impact, or burn severity, of large
wildfires over a 26-year period. (The MTBS project defines large fires as those
that affect more than 1,000 acres in the western <ST1><ST1>United
States</ST1></ST1> or 500 acres in the East.) This project is part of the
Wildland Fire Leadership Council’s overall strategy to monitor the effectiveness
of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act.<O>
<BR></O></P>
<P>In the past, consistent geospatial information on the effects of large
<ST1><ST1>U.S.</ST1></ST1> wildfires was nonexistent. Researchers and land
managers had no scientifically sound baseline for burn severity, no clear and
comprehensive data set to identify trends in the frequency of wildland fires or
the shifts in the post-fire characteristics of burned lands.<O> <BR></O></P>
<P>But the MTBS project is changing that. For the next several years, the
project will be creating an invaluable data legacy of wildland fires and their
impacts across the nation. “Burn severity maps and analyses will help answer
many fundamental questions about wildland fires, including how fires relate to
possible climate change,” Eidenshink says.<O></O></P>Eidenshink and his
colleagues at EROS and the Forest Service’s Remote Sensing Applications Center
are developing data on U.S. wildfires by using a powerful mathematical tool, the
“differenced Normalized Burn Ratio algorithm.” The methodology to map burn
severity was developed by colleagues from USGS and the National Park Service.
The group has begun mapping the burn severity of the thousands of major U.S.
wildland fires from 1984 to 2010 and is carrying out the project in two
concurrent time phases: historic and current. <BR><BR>They are mapping by region
fires from 1984 to 2003 (historic fires). At the same time, they are mapping
fires across the country from 2004 to 2010 (current fires). Mapping is now
underway for historic fires in the Pacific Northwest and
<ST1><ST1>California</ST1></ST1>. Mapping for current fires from 2004 culminated
this past spring. During 2004, 347 major wildland fires raged across 7,781,049
acres nationwide.<O> <BR></O>
<P>This extraordinary project contains an essential ingredient: Landsat images.
These readily available, low-cost images provide the longest consistent record
of relatively high spatial and spectral resolution data for mapping burn
severity. In fact by employing Normalized Burn Ratio algorithms, the project's
computer programs can automatically extract a great deal of fundamental
burn-severity information from Landsat images<SPAN></SPAN>. However, creating
burn-severity maps, requires the skills of highly trained analysts. These
specialists interpret the raw data in light of their own experience with fire
behavior and its effects in a given ecological setting. It is a time-consuming
process.<O> <BR></O></P>
<P>“Once an analyst has the appropriate pre- and post-fire imagery in hand,”
says Eidenshink, “a single assessment can take several hours, depending upon the
size of the fire and the complexity of the interplay of land-cover and
burn-severity variations.”<O> <BR></O></P>
<P>The mapping team will have to invest an enormous amount of time and effort to
analyze all of the major wildfires from 1984 to 2010.<SPAN> </SPAN>But the
26-year span of the project is critical. Severe periodic droughts, increased
fuel loads, and a higher frequency of uncharacteristic fires since 2000 have
made it essential for trend analyses to span a significant period of time.<SPAN>
</SPAN>These lengthier analyses will help the mapping team better account for
variability in factors potentially affecting fire severity, including
climate.<SPAN> </SPAN></P>
<P><O></O>The maps and analyses from the MTBS project are accessible to anyone
at <A id=http://svinetfc4.fs.fed.us/mtbs/| style="TEXT-DECORATION: none"
href="http://svinetfc4.fs.fed.us/mtbs/"><FONT color=#0000ff>
http://svinetfc4.<WBR>fs.fed.us/<WBR>mtbs/</FONT></A>, but local, state and
national researchers and land and resource managers are the site’s primary
audience. Online project information will help this group to evaluate trends in
burn severity and to develop and assess the effectiveness of their
land-management decisions.<SPAN> </SPAN>It will also provide them with an
essential baseline from which they can monitor the recovery and health of
fire-affected landscapes over time — a recipe for success.</P>
<P>To learn how scientists create burn-severity maps, go to:</P><A
id=http://eros.usgs.gov/images/mtbs_process.jpg| style="TEXT-DECORATION: none"
href="http://eros.usgs.gov/images/mtbs_process.jpg"><FONT
color=#0000ff>http://eros.<WBR>usgs.gov/<WBR>images/mtbs_<WBR>process.jpg</FONT></A><BR></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>