Large wildfire Incident Status Summary (ICS-209) report-generated data for the western United States, 2002-2016

This data publication includes data on wildfire incident identification, location, weather, cause, consequence, and management tactic for wildfires in the western United States greater than 40.5 hectares in size which were reported from 2002-2016. Data are derived from Incident Status Summary (ICS-209) interagency reports from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group database. These data are used to understand how wildland fire management strategies have differed across the western United States in recent years and how management has changed since the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. Fire weather captured a manager’s intent and allocation of fire management resources relative to burning conditions, where a manager’s desire and ability to suppress is either complemented by fire weather, at odds with fire weather, or put aside due to other priorities.
This dataset was analyzed to evaluate how and where the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy affected the application of fire management strategies a decade after its implementation. Our objectives were to explore what effect, if any, the 2009 Policy Guidance had on the strategic response to wildland fires (e.g., full suppression of wildfires versus managing for something other than full suppression or a combination of these options), and to what extent individual fires changed in terms of management duration and area burned. In addition to the area burned by individual fires, we explored what effect, if any, the 2009 Policy Guidance had on total area burned over the course of a fire season.
For more information about this study and these data, see Young et al. (2020).