LANDFIRE (LF), also known as the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Program, is a vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristic data creation program managed by both the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) and the U.S. Department of the Interior with involvement from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and NatureServe. LF represents the first and only complete, nationally consistent collection of over 20 geo-spatial products (including vegetation type and structure, fuels, and fire regimes), field plot databases, and ecological models that can be used across multiple disciplines to support cross-boundary planning, management, and operations for all lands of the United States and affiliated territories. These products depict the nation's major ecosystems and wildlife habitats.
Results/Conclusions
The LANDFIRE Program is producing a new base map product suite known as “LF Remap” that represents circa 2016 vegetation conditions across all lands of the United States at 30m scale. LF Remap leverages current Landsat satellite imagery, lidar data, and updated user-contributed field plot data to create improved vegetation, fuels, and fire regime products. This presentation will focus on vegetation mapping techniques and modeling approaches used to expand upon previous LF products, highlight new features for ecological applications, and discuss methods and product components for vegetation type, cover, and height. The vegetation type legend was expanded to include over 100 additional ecological types, many of which are were previously aggregated types within sparsely vegetated and riparian or wetland areas. Semi-natural or ruderal vegetation types were standardized to maintain consistency across the United States. Ecological models were augmented by the addition of several hundred thousand field plots, many that capture rare or uncommon vegetation types at a regional scale. In addition to using the Ecological Systems classification for mapping vegetation type, a second map is being produced that uses the U.S. National Vegetation Classification. LF Remap product releases will progress incrementally through 2021 for six geographic areas of the continental United States, followed by Hawaii, and insular areas, and Alaska. This presentation will include a qualitative and comparative analysis of map products and discuss cross-validation agreement assessment results.