Maps of mechanical fuel reduction treatment constraints for the United States Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes

This data publication includes the data used to quantify the amount and spatial arrangement of land available for mechanical risk reduction fuel treatments after considering operational constraints within the twenty-one landscapes prioritized in the USDA Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy (WCS) plan which was initiated in 2022. These landscapes are found in the western United States: Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. Data were prepared by combining readily available datasets in a Google Earth Engine workflow. This data publication includes two different types of files which were generated using source data from the years 2016-2023: 1) a layered raster dataset (GeoTIFF file) for each of the twenty-one priority landscapes for the three different constraint scenarios considered; and 2) a comma-separated values (CSV) file containing data on the total area remaining available for mechanical operations under the three operational scenarios within individual fireshed project areas (with at least 25% overlap with a priority landscape). The GeoTIFF files can be used to determine the spatial extent of mechanically available land at the priority landscape level and to identify which constraining factor(s) is the most limiting. The CSV file was used to quantify the spatial arrangement of mechanically available and constrained land at the fireshed project area level using the USFS Fireshed Registry nested spatial framework.
The USDA Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy was initiated with the goal to implement proactive management actions to foster fire- and climate-adapted forests in the western United States. This plan was backed by billions of dollars in funding by the United States federal government appropriated through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (P.L. 117-581) and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (P.L. 117-1692) made available to the Forest Service to complete the proposed work. Even with substantial funding allocated to complete the fuels reduction work needed, prior research that considered layered legal, operational, and administrative constraints to implementing mechanical operations indicates that there could be major challenges to completing the proposed work on some landscapes, whereas meeting treatment objectives may be more feasible on other landscapes. This analysis and the resulting data were performed to quantify the amount and spatial arrangement of land available for mechanical risk reduction fuel treatments after considering layered operational constraints within the twenty-one landscapes identified in the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.
Full details regarding this study and these data can be found in Woolsey et al. (2024). The Fireshed Registry (Ager et al. 2021) contains details on the nested spatial framework created to organize the landscape into units for managing wildfire risk to communities. Source code used to generate these datasets and perform analysis for this project is provided in Woolsey (2024).