This data layer represents a potential Conservation Target for PFLCC's 'Hardwood Forested Uplands' Priority Resource (PR). The potential CT is Fire Regime. These layers were created for an initial investigation of potential CT's suggested at brainstorming workshops. The initial investigation entails locating available datasets to address the suggested CT as closely as possible and performing minimal analyses to determine their usefulness. The final set of CT's and their associated datasets will be chosen after targets (e.g., endpoints) are established as a threshold for achieving conservation success for that CT.
Currently the USGS Landfire (also known as the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools) -- Event Class vegetation structure core layer is the only available data set regarding fire regimes. This is a nationwide data set that is frequently updated, but is intended for use at a much larger scale than our priority resources. However, it is a stand-in for a Florida fire geodatabase that PFLCC is developing for Florida that should be usable sometime in 2018. The resulting Florida fire database will be continually updated and will provide fire footprints and additional information (intensity, time of year, etc.) for each fire event.
Landfire is a cooperative project from the Nature Conservancy, the USDA Forest Service, Department of the Interior, and other agencies. Vegetation disturbance data for 1999-2014 derived from Landsat satellite imagery, local agency data, and ancillary data is used to determine evidence of fire. For additional information on the Landfire program, see the Landfire website (https://www.landfire.gov/. ).
For a description of the priority resource layer, see the Hardwood ForestedUplands Priority Resource layer found in this gallery.
For this analysis, the Landfire data was reprojected to a custom projection to match that used for the priority resource data. The pixel size was left at 30x30m, coarser than the priority resource resolution. Areas of landfire data will not accurately reflect the areal boundaries of the priority resource, and so use of this data should be viewed with caution. More detailed analyses will be done when the Florida geodatabase becomes available. Pixels from the landfire layer were extracted using the Hardwood Forested Uplands PR raster layer as a mask. For preliminary summaries of the extracted values, see also the 'Hardwood Forested Uplands’ webinar (in pdf form) located within this gallery.
