Biophysical Settings

LANDFIRE's (LF) Biophysical Settings (BPS) represents the vegetation system that may have been dominant on the landscape prior to Euro-American settlement and is based on both the current biophysical environment and an approximation of the historical disturbance regime. LF uses BPS to depict reference conditions of vegetation across landscapes.

Map units are based on NatureServe's Ecological Systems classification and represent the natural plant communities that may have been present during the reference period. Each BPS map unit is matched with a model of vegetation succession. The actual time period for this data set is a composite of both the historical context provided by the fire regime and vegetation dynamics models and the more recent field and geospatial inputs used to create it.

LF 2014 and earlier versions: BPS is unchanged from LF National's BPS except for updates made to water, barren, and snow classes (additions or removal), so that non-vegetated cover types within the BPS product matches LF existing vegetation and fuel products.

LF 2016 Remap and beyond: BPS now includes the following products as attributes of BPS to ensure the linkage of these characteristics to BPS is maintained.

• Fire Return Interval (FRI)
• Percent of Low-severity Fire (PRC_SURFAC)
• Percent of Mixed-severity Fire (PRC_MIXED)
• Percent of Replacement-severity Fire (PRC_REPLAC)
• Fire Regime Groups (FRG_NEW)

LF 2016 Remap and beyond includes a 90-kilometer buffer along the 1,500 miles of the eastern and southern borders AK shares with Canada. Then with the LF 2020 update, and future updates, for the Conterminous United States (CONUS) a 90-kilometer buffer into Mexico is also included.

Product availability

Attribute Data Dictionary (LF 2.2.0)

Comma separated value (CSV) files can be found in the LF Library.

Download Data

Metadata:

• CONUS (LF 2.2.0) [HTML] [XML]
• AK (LF 1.4.0) [HTML] [XML]
• HI (LF 2.0.0) [HTML] [XML]