In 2011, the USGS completed the mapping of 1972 to 2007 historical wildfires in Lincoln and Clark counties of Nevada using Landsat data. This work resulted in the documentation of historical wildfire information related to burn perimeters, severity, frequency, and post fire vegetation characteristics that is useful to local, State, and Federal land managers in Nevada. In FY 2012, USGS will expand the historical wildfire database to the entire Mojave study area including several military reservations. For this work , the minimum fire size will be reduced from 1,000 to approximately 100 acres. Mapping additional smaller fires will allow more statistically robust field sampling of current vegetation and seedbank characteristics. This project is expected to result in a better understanding of both effectiveness of treatments and effects of fires in the Mojave Desert ecosystem.
Historical burn mapping for the Mojave bioregion located in California, Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Fire areas are composited for the period 1972 to 2007 and colored red. The Mojave bioregion boundary is dark brown, roads are light grey, and State boundaries are black.