This is an updated version of the previously posted geospatial dataset of fire occurrence history within the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Fire perimeters and point locations were taken directly from GPS field data when available, but this type of data is only available for the recent history during which GPS units were used by park officials. Otherwise, perimeters and points were digitized directly from the best sources available. In some cases these sources were hand-drawn maps, some were drawn on USGS topographic maps, and some were described through fire reporting narratives only. For the years 1942-present, the federal Wildland Fire Management Information (WFMI) list of fire occurrences for Great Smoky Mountains NP was consulted to provide fire locations and information. This list is updated annually by park fire officials and subsequently by the National Wildfire Coordination Group. It includes information related to the location, size, cost, fuels, and other pertinent information related to fires within the park's boundary. Additionally, park archives were consulted for a complete list of fire occurrences prior to 1942. Records for fires during the years of 1953-1959 have been lost or are otherwise not available. Perimeters corresponding to events from those years are generalized from a single list found in the park library. Some GIS data were taken from a 2003 fire mapping project by Lincoln Memorial University, and these fire perimeters were digitized directly from Mark Harmon's 1979 fire inventory. An accuracy assessment was performed on these and found the LMU data to be consistent with Harmon's maps, which were drawn by hand on USGS 7.5' quad maps.

This project (funded by the Joint Fire Science Program through the Seney Natural History Association) contains prescribed and wildfire point and polygon data covering 1944-2012 that occurred within the boundaries of the Seney National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) and point data from the dendrochronological work of Drobyshev et al. (2008, Canadian J. Forest Research). The intention of the project was to create a data set to provide a single source for users of GIS to access point and area fire information. Prior to this project a separate polygon data set created by the refuge covering fires from 2003-2009 was available as was the Drobyshev et al. (2008) data in a separate file. All other records of fire events on the refuge were in various forms ranging from table sets in the Fire Management Information System (FMIS) to references in refuge annual narratives. There was a clear need to establish a system showing basic location and historical information in one format. GIS using ESRI shapefiles was chosen since it shows the most promise and flexibility in future planning and modeling use. This data format should allow for less duplication of future efforts and increase the usability of fire data to not only to refuge staff but also partner agencies and researchers.

This project (funded by the Joint Fire Science Program through the Seney Natural History Association) contains prescribed and wildfire point and polygon data covering 1944-2012 that occurred within the boundaries of the Seney National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) and point data from the dendrochronological work of Drobyshev et al. (2008, Canadian J. Forest Research). The intention of the project was to create a data set to provide a single source for users of GIS to access point and area fire information. Prior to this project a separate polygon data set created by the refuge covering fires from 2003-2009 was available as was the Drobyshev et al. (2008) data in a separate file. All other records of fire events on the refuge were in various forms ranging from table sets in the Fire Management Information System (FMIS) to references in refuge annual narratives. There was a clear need to establish a system showing basic location and historical information in one format. GIS using ESRI shapefiles was chosen since it shows the most promise and flexibility in future planning and modeling use. This data format should allow for less duplication of future efforts and increase the usability of fire data to not only to refuge staff but also partner agencies and researchers.

This coverage represents the ignition points from YOSE fire history from 1930 through 2019. Where ignition points were not given on 1202 records, the ignition point was generated from the centroid of the fire history polygon. For fires that originated outside the park boundaries, some ignition locations are shown. The ignition location of record is kept internally by YOSE fire GIS staff due to the errors resulting from the SACS to WFMI conversion. These locations are the internal locations and not the locations shown on the 1202 report.

This coverage represents the YOSE fire history from 1930 through 2018. Original data was interpreted from historical fire records held at Yosemite National Park in the late 1980s. GRASS data was converted to Arc/Info coverage format when Yosemite migrated to Arc/Info in 1995. Some vector data was lost in conversion from GRASS. In those instances, polygons were vectorized from raster versions that remained in GRASS. Each year from 1995 - 2000, fires were input into Arc/Info by digitizing 1:24,000 USGS paper maps (7.5" series) or from Trimble GPS readings. Starting 2001, all larger fire perimeters were acquired through ground GPS or helicopter GPS reconnaissance. Small fire point locations were acquired through ground GPS or helicopter GPS and buffered to approximate fire size

Wildland fire event polygons for 2004-2017 reconciled in SmartFire 2 for the EPA Air Quality Times Series (EQUATES) modeling project (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109022). These event polygons represent a combination of properties from a collection of remotely sensed and ground-based fire activity datasets. The primary underlying fire activity datasets for the fire event polygons are the Hazard Mapping System (HMS) remote sense fire product (https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/land/hms.html), SIT-ICS/209 Incident Reports (https://www.wildfire.gov/application/sit209), GeoMAC Fire Event polygons (https://data-nifc.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/nifc::historic-perimeters-combined-2000-2018-geomac/about), and the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) burn scar event perimeters (https://www.mtbs.gov/direct-download). This dataset includes events identified as over wildland and does not contain biomass burning events over agricultural areas, such as crop residue field burns. Additionally, certain grass fires, such as the annual prescribed fires in the Flint Hills region, have been removed for inclusion in a separate processing stream. Some minor updates have been made to the dataset since the publishing of the EQUATES emission inventories including removal of known errors related to issues in the underlying activity. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Beidler, J., G. Pouliot, and K. Foley. 2004-2017 Geospatial Dataset of Wild and Prescribed Fire Activity Over the Conterminous United States. Data in Brief. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 56: 110856, (2024).

The LANDFIRE (LF) Remap Fuel Vegetation Cover (FVC) represents a modified pre-disturbance version of the Existing Vegetation Cover (EVC) product from previous LF versions. LF Remap EVC is mapped as continuous estimates of canopy cover for tree, shrub, and herbaceous lifeforms with a potential range from 10% to 100%. To translate continuous EVC values into fuel model assignments, EVC values are binned to correspond with the bins from previous LF versions. FVC leverages fuel transition assignments related to disturbed areas by re-establishing pre-disturbance vegetation and is developed using the full suite of LF vegetation releases, plus the most recent 10 years of disturbance data. FVC is a capable fuels product that calculates Time Since Disturbance (TSD) assignments for disturbed areas using an “effective year." For example, year 2020 fuels may be calculated for the year 2020. This new process considers all the existing disturbances included in LF Remap and adjusts the TSD for these to the effective year (2020 in this example), making the products "2020 capable fuels." More information about capable fuels can be found at https://www.landfire.gov/lf_remap.php.

The LANDFIRE (LF) Remap Fuel Vegetation Cover (FVC) represents a modified pre-disturbance version of the Existing Vegetation Cover (EVC) product from previous LF versions. LF Remap EVC is mapped as continuous estimates of canopy cover for tree, shrub, and herbaceous lifeforms with a potential range from 10% to 100%. To translate continuous EVC values into fuel model assignments, EVC values are binned to correspond with the bins from previous LF versions. FVC leverages fuel transition assignments related to disturbed areas by re-establishing pre-disturbance vegetation and is developed using the full suite of LF vegetation releases, plus the most recent 10 years of disturbance data. FVC is a capable fuels product that calculates Time Since Disturbance (TSD) assignments for disturbed areas using an “effective year." For example, year 2020 fuels may be calculated for the year 2020. This new process considers all the existing disturbances included in LF Remap and adjusts the TSD for these to the effective year (2020 in this example), making the products "2020 capable fuels." More information about capable fuels can be found at https://www.landfire.gov/lf_remap.php.

The geospatial products described and distributed here depict the probability of high-severity fire, if a fire were to occur, for several ecoregions in the contiguous western US. The ecological effects of wildland fire � also termed the fire severity � are often highly heterogeneous in space and time. This heterogeneity is a result of spatial variability in factors such as fuel, topography, and climate (e.g. mean annual temperature). However, temporally variable factors such as daily weather and climatic extremes (e.g. an unusually warm year) also may play a key role. Scientists from the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and the University of Montana conducted a study in which observed data were used to produce statistical models describing the probability of high severity fire as a function of fuel, topography, climate, and fire weather. Observed data from over 2000 fires (from 2002-2015) were used to build individual models for each of 19 ecoregions in the contiguous US (see Parks et al. 2018, Figure 1). High severity fire was measured using a fire severity metric termed the relativized burn ratio, which uses pre- and post-fire Landsat imagery to measure fire-induced ecological change. Fuel included pre-fire metrics of live fuel amount such as NDVI. Topography included factors such as slope and potential solar radiation. Climate summarized 30-year averages of factors such as mean summer temperature that spatially vary across the study area. Lastly, fire weather incorporated temporally variable factors such as daily and annual temperature. In turn, these statistical models were used to generate 'wall-to-wall' maps depicting the probability of high severity fire, if a fire were to occur, for 13 of the 19 ecoregions. Maps were not produced for ecoregions in which model quality was deemed inadequate. All maps use fuel data representing the year 2016 and therefore provide a fairly up-to-date assessment of the potential for high severity fire. For those ecoregions in which the relative influence of fire weather was fairly strong (n=6), two additional maps were produced, one depicting the probability of high severity fire under moderate weather and the other under extreme weather. An important consideration is that only pixels defined as forest were used to build the models; consequently maps exclude pixels considered non-forest.