Simulating historic fire regimes across the United States for LANDFIRE
The Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project (LANDFIRE) is a five year multi agency project in the United States to produce and distribute data layers and decision support tools for strategic planning and management of wildland fuel and the restoration of fire adapted ecosystems.
As part of LANDFIRE, ESSA developed versions 5 and 6 of the Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool (VDDT). VDDT is a non-spatial state and transition landscape modeling tool that is being used by LANDFIRE to develop landscape-level models of reference conditions for historic fire regimes across the United States. ESSA also participated in the development of a database to track and organize meta-data associated with each model. VDDT and the ‘Model Tracker Database’ are used in combination at expert workshops where fire ecologists and fire managers from different parts of the country collaborate in the development of the reference condition models. These models then undergo a rigorous peer review process. VDDT was selected for this process because it is easy to use and understand, allows for rapid gaming and sensitivity analyses, and is versatile enough to simulate any kind of landscape within a state and transition framework.