Fire spread rate (FSR) is an important parameter in fire behavior studies such as fire growth modeling. Despite the importance of FSR modeling and fire simulations, there has been no comprehensive exploratory analysis of FSR in the U.S. due to lack of FSR data for the entire country. In order to fill this gap, we produced an FSR dataset for the entire U.S. using the MODIS Burned Area product from 2001 to 2015. This dataset contains a time series of FSR for each individual fire event. We explore the spatial and temporal patterns of FSR to identify primary characteristics within this dataset. Both visualization methods and statistical methods are used to answer following questions: What is the spatial and temporal pattern of FSR at different scales - from landscape to continental scale? Has the FSR changed significantly during the years 2001 to 2016? What are the significant trends in FSR across eco-regions?
Results/Conclusions
The analysis of the FSR dataset shows that while the minimum FSR is almost constant for all years (about 4 Ha/day), the mean FSR is very different for each year. For example, the mean FSR for years 2001, 2007, and 2015 is 103, 77, and 89 Ha/day, respectively. Also, the results show that between 14% to 19% of all fire events in each year have a speed of less than 20 Ha/day. In the next step of this research, we are going to explore the spatial and temporal pattern of FSR at different spatial and temporal scales. This work will help us to learn more about the dynamics of fire spread at various scales that leads to more accurate simulation models such as fire growth simulation models and the fire spread risk analysis.