Draft Indicator: Acres of open habitat that is regularly burned - old
Summary
Pine woodlands, savannas, and prairies- Acres of open canopy habitat that is regularly burned This layer is one of the South Atlantic LCC indicators in the pine woodland, savanna and prairies focal environment. To read more about the indicators and how they are being used, please visit the indicator page. Reason for selection This indicator represents the overall structure and condition of the habitat, is regularly monitored, and is widely used and understood by diverse partners. Target Double the acres burned on a regular basis Input Data Data from the LANDFIRE program <http://www.landfire.gov/> were used to quantify fire distribution. LANDFIRE is a cooperative project from The Nature Conservancy, USDA Forest Service, Department [...]
Summary
Pine woodlands, savannas, and prairies- Acres of open canopy habitat that is regularly burned This layer is one of the South Atlantic LCC indicators in the pine woodland, savanna and prairies focal environment. To read more about the indicators and how they are being used, please visit the indicator page.
Reason for selection This indicator represents the overall structure and condition of the habitat, is regularly monitored, and is widely used and understood by diverse partners.
Target Double the acres burned on a regular basis
Input Data Data from the LANDFIRE program <http://www.landfire.gov/> were used to quantify fire distribution. LANDFIRE is a cooperative project from The Nature Conservancy, USDA Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and other agencies. Specifically, vegetation disturbance data for 1999–2010 derived from Landsat satellite imagery, local agency data contributions, and ancillary data (see Ryan and Opperman, 2013; Vogelmann et al., 2011).
Mapping Steps 1) From the disturbance data, we only used disturbances from fires, which excluded mechanical, chemical, and unknown disturbances.
2) The Aggregate (maximum) function was used to rescale data to a 1 km resolution.
Past, Present, and Future LANDFIRE is regularly updated.
Known Issues Based on known sites, regularly burned pine forests were severely underestimated with the initial 30 m resolution of LANDFIRE data. This is likely due to the amount of longleaf pine forest with moderate canopy cover (30-100%). Therefore, we used a more coarse, and realistic, 1 km resolution. This resolution corresponded well with available Bachman’s sparrow and red-cockaded woodpecker data.
References Ryan, K.C., Opperman, T.S., 2013. LANDFIRE–A national vegetation/fuels data base for use in fuels treatment, restoration, and suppression planning. Forest Ecology and Management 294, 208-216.
Vogelmann, J.E., Kost, J.R., Tolk, B., Howard, S., Short, K., Chen, X., Huang, C., Pabst, K., Rollins, M.G., 2011. Monitoring landscape change for LANDFIRE using multi-temporal satellite imagery and ancillary data. Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, IEEE Journal of 4, 252-264.