The fire perimeter and prescribed fire feature
services provide a
reasonable view of the spatial distribution of past large fires but is in no
way complete. Some fires are missing because
historical records were lost or damaged, were too small for the minimum
cutoffs, had inadequate documentation or have not yet been incorporated into
the database. Due to missing perimeters this data should be used
carefully for statistical analysis and reporting (see Use Limitation in
metadata). Other errors with the fire perimeter
database include duplicate fires and over-generalization. Additionally,
over-generalization, particularly with large old fires, may show unburned
"islands" within the final perimeter as burned. Users of the fire
perimeter database must exercise caution in application of the data. Careful
use of the fire perimeter database will prevent users from drawing inaccurate
or erroneous conclusions from the data. Please contact the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Fire and Resource Assessment
Program for a detailed explanation of the limitations of the data. This data is
updated annually in the spring with fire perimeters from the previous fire
season. As of April 2023, it represents fire22_1. CAL FIRE (including contract counties), USDA
Forest Service Region 5, USDI Bureau of Land Management & National Park
Service, and other agencies jointly maintain a comprehensive fire perimeter GIS
layer for public and private lands throughout the state. The data covers fires
back to 1878. Current criteria for data collection are as
follows: CAL FIRE (including contract counties) submit
perimeters ≥10 acres in timber, ≥50 acres in brush, or ≥300 acres in grass,
and/or ≥3 damaged/ destroyed residential or commercial structures, and/or
caused ≥1 fatality. All cooperating agencies submit perimeters ≥10
acres. Firep22_1 was released in April 2023. Three
hundred five fires from the 2022 fire season were added to the database. The
2021 Dotta (part of Beckwourth Complex), Greenhorn, and Hartman fire perimeters
were added. Another 45 fires were added by USFW from 2015-2021. The 1988 Hessel
fire was added in LNU. The 2019 Cave fire was replaced with a more detailed
perimeter submitted by Santa Barbara County. The 2017 Hudson, 2017 Lake, 2017
Jones, 2017 "37", 2019 Tucker, and 2019 Refuge perimeters were
replaced with imagery digitized perimeters from USFW. Attributes were updated
for 32 records. One hundred ten perimeters were removed due to duplication or
being completely contained outside of California state borders. The field
IRWINID was added to provide a unique ID; fires before 2022 are lacking this
attribution (with the exception of those added in this publication where
possible). The following fires were identified as meeting our collection
criteria, but are not included in this version and will hopefully be added in
the next update: 2022 Cable (CAL FIRE, AEU), 2022 All American (BIA, CRA). Includes separate layers filtered by criteria
as follows:
California
Fire Perimeters (all): Unfiltered. The entire
collection of wildfire perimeters in the database. It is scale
dependent and starts displaying at the country level scale.
Recent
Large Fire Perimeters (>=5000 acres): Filtered for wildfires greater or
equal to 5,000 acres for the last 5 years of fires (2018-2022), symbolized
with color by year and is scale dependent and starts displaying at the
country level scale. Year-only labels for recent large fires.
California
Fire Perimeters (1950+): Filtered for wildfires that started in
1950-present. Symbolized by decade, and display starting at country level scale.
Prescribed
Burns: Unfiltered. The entire collection of prescribed burn
perimeters in the database. Begin displaying at county level scale.
Detailed metadata is included in the following documents:"fire22_1" Metadata: Metadata for Firep22_1"rxburn22_1" Metadata: Metadata for Prescribed Fires Rxburn22_1For
any questions, please contact the data steward:Kim Wallin, GIS SpecialistCAL FIRE, Fire Resource and Assessment Program (FRAP)
[email protected]
