LANDFIRE 2014 v.1.4.0

Landfire 2014 v1.4.0 data for the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii were delivered in 2017. Landfire 2014 v1.4.0 is a vegetation and fuels mapping effort to update the base product suite. LF 2014 incorporates landscape change and disturbances, such as wildland fire, fuel and vegetation treatments, insects and disease, storm damage, and invasive plants that occurred in 2013 and 2014.

This data is the data source used by WFDSS for fire behavior analysis, and when users query fuels and topographic data on incident and intelligence map displays. Users can change the default selection on the Incident Information page, if they choose. If an analyst chooses a different data source for an analysis, the chosen data source would override the incident default data source for that analysis only.

This update includes:

• responses to vegetation successional change in forested types, and
• revisions to address discrepancies between map products and known field conditions.

The LF 2014 update also:

• Supports wildland fire and natural resource management, planning, research, analysis, and assessments.
• Uses Landsat imagery, point, and polygon data 2013-2014.
• Incorporates new or updated institutional data sources.
• Changes data only where vegetation changed due to successional change or disturbance.
• Updates fuel products based on vegetation products.

The LF 2014 update strategy applies a consistent approach to combine geospatial data depicting areas of disturbance with Remote Sensing of Landscape Change (RSLC) derived data to develop the disturbance layers. Data from combinations of Landsat satellite imagery, fire program data (e.g., Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS)), cooperator-provided field data, and other ancillary data (e.g., Protected Area Database (PAD)) are used to locate and characterize large wildfires.

If you are selecting the KBDI version of this data (Available only in they Southeastern U>S>), please click here for more information on how that layer is automatically adjusted for drought conditions.

Landscape Data Introduction

WFDSS uses the aspect, slope, elevation, fuel model, canopy cover, canopy base height (CBH), canopy bulk density (CBD), and stand height layers to a create landscape file that displays fuels, topography and canopy information simultaneously (go to the Intelligence or Incidents - Situation page, or for fire behavior modeling, go to the Analysis page). Similar to the LANDFIRE data, all values are measured with the metric system:

Variable	Unit of Measure
aspect	degrees
slope	degrees
elevation	meters
canopy base height	meters
canopy bulk density	kg/m3
canopy cover	percent
stand height	meters
fire behavior fuel model	40 or 13 (user selected)

Fire Behavior Modeling Considerations with LANDFIRE 2014

• Users need to update fire scars and other disturbances after 2014.
• Either the Finney (1998) or Scott and Reinhardt (2001) (https://www.fire.org/downloads/nexus/2.0.0/rp29.pdf) crown fire method (CFM) is suitable for the initial analysis. If you use Finney, you will likely need to double or triple the CBH. This IS NOT necessary when using Scott/Reinhardt. It is also a good practice to critique the CBH when using either CFC method.
• The Scott and Reinhardt CFM will likely produce more spotting, higher rates of spread, and flame lengths, and more passive and active crown fire.
• Users are encouraged to download the LCP critique in WFDSS to evaluate the fire behavior fuel models and canopy attributes that will affect predicted fire behavior.