Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]: 6th edition

This data publication contains a spatial database of wildfires that occurred in the United States from 1992 to 2020. It is the fifth update of a publication originally generated to support the national Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system. The wildfire records were acquired from the reporting systems of federal, state, and local fire organizations. The following core data elements were required for records to be included in this data publication: discovery date, final fire size, and a point location at least as precise as a Public Land Survey System (PLSS) section (1-square mile grid). The data were transformed to conform, when possible, to the data standards of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), including an updated wildfire-cause standard (approved August 2020). Basic error-checking was performed and redundant records were identified and removed, to the degree possible. The resulting product, referred to as the Fire Program Analysis fire-occurrence database (FPA FOD), includes 2.3 million geo-referenced wildfire records, representing a total of 180 million acres burned during the 29-year period. Identifiers necessary to link the point-based, final-fire-reporting information to published large-fire-perimeter and operational-situation-reporting datasets are included.
There is a wealth of information to be found in agency and local fire reports, but even the most rudimentary interagency analyses of wildfire numbers and area burned from the authoritative systems of record have been stymied to some degree by their disunity. While necessarily incomplete in some aspects, the database presented here is intended to facilitate fairly high-resolution geospatial analysis of U.S. fire activity over the period 1992-2020, based on available information from federal, state, and local systems of record. It was originally generated to support the national, interagency Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system (http://www.forestsandrangelands.gov/FPA/index.shtml).
This data publication is the sixth edition of the FPA FOD, which spans 1992-2020. The first edition spanned 1992-2011 (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009), the second edition spanned 1992-2012 (https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.2), the third edition spanned 1992-2013 (https://doi.org/10.2838/RDS-2013-0009.3), the fourth edition spanned 1992-2015 (https://doi.org/10.2837/RDS-2013-0009.4), and the fifth edition spanned 1992-2018 (https://doi.org/10.2837/RDS-2013-0009.5). All editions were developed as described by Short (2014). Linkable, published large fire perimeters are available at https://www.mtbs.gov/; research-ready ICS-209 situation-reporting data are available at https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/All-hazards_dataset_mined_from_the_US_National_Incident_Management_System_1999-2020/19858927 and described at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-0403-0 (documentation update pending). This sixth edition was published on 11/01/2022. On 11/10/2022 we changed the geodatabase projection from WGS84 to NAD83 and changed the SQLite package to SpatiaLite format. On 03/23/2023 we provided access to the sixth edition of the map service. Minor metadata updates were made on 08/09/2023. * These data are also available as a map service: https://apps.fs.usda.gov/arcx/rest/services/EDW/EDW_FireOccurrence6thEdition_01/MapServer