A Fire Severity Mapping System (FSMS) for real-time management applications and long term planning: Developing a map of the landscape potential for severe fire in the western United States

The Fire Severity Mapping System project is geared toward providing fire managers across the western United States with critical information for dealing with and planning for the ecological effects of wildfire at multiple levels of thematic, spatial, and temporal detail. For this project, we are developing a comprehensive, west-wide map of the landscape potential for severe fire. Holden et al. (in press) demonstrated on the Gila National Forest that using satellite-derived fire severity data from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS, http://www.mtbs.gov) project, coupled with topographic and biophysical predictor variables, they could predict locations of high severity fire with over 80% accuracy.