Developing the LANDFIRE Fire Regime Data Products

OVERVIEW Developing nationally consistent data products describing ecological departure from historical conditions and historical fire regimes is a main component of the LANDFIRE Project. The purpose of this document is to describe the development of LANDFIRE data products related to characterizing historical vegetation conditions and fire regimes, these include: 1) maps of potential vegetation (an important pre-cursor to LANDFIRE fire regime products); models of vegetation dynamics, maps characterizing current seral status (succession class), maps of fire regime groups (FRG), and maps of fire regime condition class (FRCC) and FRCC departure. Potential vegetation and succession class maps are developed using gradient modeling and remote sensing methodologies; vegetation dynamics models are created at regional workshops organized by The Nature Conservancy; FRG maps are developed by combining maps of simulated mean fire return interval and percent replacement-severity fire (http://www.frcc.gov, NIFC 2007); and FRCC and FRCC departure maps are developed using the methods described in the interagency FRCC guidebook (http://www.frcc.gov). All LANDFIRE data products are available at http://www.landfire.gov.