Annual Disturbance

Annual Disturbance Products

Annual Disturbance Legend Crosswalk (LDist, PDist, Dist)

Limited Annual Disturbance

Limited Annual Disturbance (LDist) made its debut with the LF 2023 Update. LDist is designed to provide a first cut of landscape change information as soon as possible to support time-sensitive updates such as risk management efforts. This early release does not include satellite change detection to capture additional disturbances and does not provide image-based severity for contributed events. Some fire program data includes severity which is present in the LANDFIRE LDist product. However, many fires and disturbance events lack severity assignments, therefore LDist severity is a default based on disturbance type (Clearcut = High Severity, Wildfire = Medium Severity, all others including prescribed fire = Low Severity).

LDist includes data inputs from the following sources:

Fire program perimeters and burn severity where available from four sources: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), Burned Area Reflectance Classification (BARC), Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire (RAVG), Landsat Burned Area (BA)
Event polygon datasets submitted from three national contributors: US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Park Service (NPS)
Event polygon datasets obtained from these online national sources: Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS), National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS), National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), USFS National Insect and Disease Risk Map (NIDRM), and Interior Fuels and Post-fire Reporting System (IFPRS)

The LDist product, first featured in the LF 2023 update, is an early "draft" of the LANDFIRE Annual Disturbance product and includes fires, disturbance events, and land management activities for the previous Fiscal Year from trusted national sources obtained in November of the previous calendar year.

Preliminary Annual Disturbance

Preliminary Annual Disturbance (PDist) is another new product making its debut with the LF 2023 Update. PDist is designed to provide a second "draft" of landscape change information and will have multiple extent releases throughout each year:

Conterminous United States (CONUS) – by GeoArea
Alaska (AK)
Hawaii (HI)
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (PRVI)

PDist includes disturbance events for the previous Fiscal Year from regional sources obtained in November of the previous calendar year. Additionally, similar to annual disturbance products in past versions, PDist includes results from LANDFIRE satellite change detection and image-based severity. A complete list of data contributors can be found here: LANDFIRE Program: Contribute Data - Previous Contributions.

The PDist product featured in the current version will be used to update the Vegetation and Fuel (including Fuel Disturbance) products included in releases throughout the rest of the year.

Annual Disturbance

The Final Annual Disturbance (Dist) product is the "final" draft of Annual Disturbance data for a given version. Compared to PDist, Dist includes additional fires and disturbance events for the previous Fiscal Year, these events were harvested from a second "pull" of the national online sources in the summer of the current calendar year.

The Public Events Geodatabase for the current version is always released in the fall, and includes events captured from this second "pull".
The events harvested from the second "pull" will not be incorporated into the production of Fuel Disturbance (FDist) and other Fuel, Vegetation, and Fire Regime products. These events will be included in the next version.

Limited Annual Disturbance

Limited Annual Disturbance (LDist) made its debut with the LF 2023 Update. LDist is designed to provide a first cut of landscape change information as soon as possible to support time-sensitive updates such as risk management efforts. This early release does not include satellite change detection to capture additional disturbances and does not provide image-based severity for contributed events. Some fire program data includes severity which is present in the LANDFIRE LDist product. However, many fires and disturbance events lack severity assignments, therefore LDist severity is a default based on disturbance type (Clearcut = High Severity, Wildfire = Medium Severity, all others including prescribed fire = Low Severity).

LDist includes data inputs from the following sources:

Fire program perimeters and burn severity where available from four sources: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), Burned Area Reflectance Classification (BARC), Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire (RAVG), Landsat Burned Area (BA)
Event polygon datasets submitted from three national contributors: US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Park Service (NPS)
Event polygon datasets obtained from these online national sources: Forest Service Activity Tracking System (FACTS), National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS), National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), USFS National Insect and Disease Risk Map (NIDRM), and Interior Fuels and Post-fire Reporting System (IFPRS)

The LDist product, first featured in the LF 2023 update, is an early "draft" of the LANDFIRE Annual Disturbance product and includes fires, disturbance events, and land management activities for the previous Fiscal Year from trusted national sources obtained in November of the previous calendar year.

Preliminary Annual Disturbance

Preliminary Annual Disturbance (PDist) is another new product making its debut with the LF 2023 Update. PDist is designed to provide a second "draft" of landscape change information and will have multiple extent releases throughout each year:

Conterminous United States (CONUS) – by GeoArea
Alaska (AK)
Hawaii (HI)
Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands (PRVI)

PDist includes disturbance events for the previous Fiscal Year from regional sources obtained in November of the previous calendar year. Additionally, similar to annual disturbance products in past versions, PDist includes results from LANDFIRE satellite change detection and image-based severity. A complete list of data contributors can be found here: LANDFIRE Program: Contribute Data - Previous Contributions.

The PDist product featured in the current version will be used to update the Vegetation and Fuel (including Fuel Disturbance) products included in releases throughout the rest of the year.

Annual Disturbance

The Final Annual Disturbance (Dist) product is the "final" draft of Annual Disturbance data for a given version. Compared to PDist, Dist includes additional fires and disturbance events for the previous Fiscal Year, these events were harvested from a second "pull" of the national online sources in the summer of the current calendar year.

The Public Events Geodatabase for the current version is always released in the fall, and includes events captured from this second "pull".
The events harvested from the second "pull" will not be incorporated into the production of Fuel Disturbance (FDist) and other Fuel, Vegetation, and Fire Regime products. These events will be included in the next version.