Eidenshink Jeffery C. author Schwind B. author Brewer K. author Zhu Zhiliang author Quayle B. author Howard Stephen M. author 2007 Elected offi cials and leaders of environmental agencies need information about the effects of large wildfi res in order to set policy and make management decisions. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), which implements and coordinates the National Fire Plan (NFP) and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies (National Fire Plan, 2004), adopted a strategy to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA). One component of this strategy is to assess the environmental impacts of large wildland fi res and identify the trends of burn severity on all lands across the United States. To that end, WFLC has sponsored a six year project, Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), which requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA-FS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to map and assess the burn severity for all large current and historical fi res. Using Landsat data and the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm, the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and USDA-FS Remote Sensing Applications Center will map burn severity of all fi res since 1984 greater than 500 acres in the east, and 1000 acres in the west. The number of historical fi res from this period combined with current fi res occurring during the course of the project will exceed 9000. The MTBS project will generate burn severity data, maps, and reports which will be available for use at local, state, and national levels to evaluate trends in burn severity and help develop and assess the effectiveness of land management decisions. Additionally, the information developed will provide a baseline from which to monitor the recovery and health of fi re-affected landscapes over time. Spatial and tabular data quantifying burn severity will augment existing information used to estimate risk associated with a range of current and future resource threats. The annual report of 2004 fi res has been completed. All data and results will be distributed to the public on a Web site. agriculture algorithm application burn burn severity component coordinates data differenced Normalized Burn Ratio dNBR Earth earth resources Earth Resources Observation and Science environmental impact EROS fire fire atlas fire management forest historical impact journal articles land land management Landsat Landsat data landscape management map monitoring normalized burn ratio policy recovery remote sensing resources restoration risk spatial trend United States USGS wildland fire wildland fire management exported from refbase (http://eros.usgs.gov/refbase/show.php?record=25693), last updated on Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:31:01 -0600 text http://fireecology.org/journal/journal-archive/ http://fireecology.org/journal/journal-archive/ Eidenshink_etal2007 EROS @ cdeering @ 1309 2007 continuing periodical academic journal 3 1 3 21 http://fireecology.org/journal/journal-archive/