Spatial datasets of probabilistic wildfire risk components for the United States (270m): 3rd edition

National data on burn probability (BP) and conditional flame-length probability (FLP) were generated for the conterminous United States (CONUS), Alaska, and Hawaii using a geospatial Fire Simulation (FSim) system developed by the USDA Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. The FSim system includes modules for weather generation, wildfire occurrence, fire growth, and fire suppression. FSim is designed to simulate the occurrence and growth of wildfires under tens of thousands of hypothetical contemporary fire seasons in order to estimate the probability of a given area (i.e., pixel) burning under current (end of 2020) landscape conditions and fire management practices. The data presented here represent modeled BP and FLPs for the United States (US) at a 270-meter grid spatial resolution. Flame-length probability is estimated for six standard Fire Intensity Levels. The six FILs correspond to flame-length classes as follows: FLP1 = < 2 feet (ft); FLP2 = 2 < 4 ft.; FLP3 = 4 < 6 ft.; FLP4 = 6 < 8 ft.; FLP5 = 8 < 12 ft.; FLP6 = 12+ ft. Because they indicate conditional probabilities (i.e., representing the likelihood of burning at a certain intensity level, given that a fire occurs), the FLP data must be used in conjunction with the BP data for risk assessment.
National-scale assessment of wildfire risk offers a consistent means of evaluating threats to valued resources and assets, thereby facilitating investments in management activities that can mitigate those risks. We used a simulation system to estimate the probabilistic components of wildfire risk across the nation. We generated the data in three volumes: (I) the conterminous U.S. (CONUS), (II) Alaska, and (III) Hawaii. These outputs have been generated to support a number of national planning and risk assessment efforts.
These data are a newer edition of the Short et al. (2016, 2020) data publications. This third edition is based on circa 2020 landscape data, which were the most current LANDFIRE products available at the time of production. The methods used to generate these data generally followed the same process used in previous editions, with improvements made at specific steps. The process steps outlined in the Data Quality, Lineage section of this metadata document are expanded from previous editions to more fully explain each step and provide additional details on methods for this edition. Beyond the newer input landscape data from LANDFIRE, we also used updated datasets for other inputs such as fire occurrence, observed gridded daily weather, and wind data from weather stations. To better capture recent climate conditions, we also shortened the time period of historical weather records used to inform the generation of simulated weather streams for simulation runs, using the most recent 15 years this time (2006-2020) rather than full record from 1972-2012 in the second edition. See the process steps described in the Data Quality, Lineage section for more details.