Fire regimes in Pennsylvania

[nelan...@gmail.com]

Recently, Brian Pfister from the Division of Forest Fire Protection at the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (PA DCNR) contacted me with a concern about fire regime mapping in his state. There are clearly abrupt transitions ("seam lines") at LANDFIRE map zone boundaries where the fire regime mapping completely changes (see map below), and these do not make sense ecologically. Because fire regime mapping is based on biophysical settings (BpS, pre-settlement vegetation) data, I brought in the BpS expert for the eastern US - Randy Swaty of The Nature Conservancy's LANDFIRE team. We had a call with Brian, where Randy explained that the error was based on a seam line issue with the BpS data (see other map below). There are several methods we are going to look into to address this issue:

1. TNC's LANDFIRE team just completed a review of the BpS models and "lumped" many where it made sense. Randy needs to check if there were any changes made to the BpSs in PA, and potentially could still make a change. However, BpS re-mapping has not yet been scheduled.
• Making any changes requires review of the very-detailed BpS model descriptions that accompany each biophysical setting. I have attached a couple from Randy from PA for reference. This review can be pretty labor-intensive, and making a substantial change can require supporting documentation from peer-reviewed literature. We are going to contact some ecological experts from the eastern area who are familiar with BpS to see if they might understand the issue, and will continue from there. 
  
2. LANDFIRE is moving to mapping by ecoregions rather than the map zones you see on the maps. This may address the issue, but again the BpS re-mapping has not been scheduled.
3. Due to timing (PA needs data updated soon) and feasibility of updating a national dataset based on local needs, we may recommend a local change for PA to make on their own for now, and work on incorporating into LANDFIRE in the future.

We hope to use this google forum thread as a means for discussion on this particular issue. Randy will be providing the BpS spatial data for Brian to download from here and we can begin. Fire away!

[Randy Swaty]

Hello!

Below is a link to the LANDFIRE BpS data for PA, and an ArcGIS Map Package.  Please let us know if you have any issues getting or using the files!

Randy

https://tnc.box.com/s/ifw5g31aq71tef5j2u9yrkms2nvf7dgr