The LANDFIRE Dependency Web

LANDFIRE is a nationwide mapping program that began 22 years ago and provides a vast suite of geospatial datasets related to vegetation and disturbance across the United States. These products often serve as the silent foundation to national wildland fire and natural resource planning applications. It is difficult to portray the amount and variety of data LANDFIRE ingests to inform its products, as well as the plethora of applications that depend on the program’s outputs. To help illustrate these connections, Inga La Puma (LANDFIRE program lead) developed a graphic that shows the flow of data into LANDFIRE, and the tools, applications, and programs that depend on it. 

Photo Credit

LANDFIRE Dependency Web Screenshot

The LANDFIRE Dependency Web helps depict the comprehensive data gathering process (left side of the graphic) before a single map is made (middle column). LANDFIRE production depends on many existing datasets and creates several of its own standalone datasets in the pursuit of mapping vegetation and fuels. Known as a science-to-operations success story, LANDFIRE takes diverse input data sources, develops methods to convert those into useful spatial data outputs, and makes those outputs publicly available. And since first releasing LANDFIRE data products into the wild over 20 years ago, they have been used – a lot (right side of graphic)! 

The graphic can be viewed in a dynamic html so users can trace the flow of data, helping demonstrate what “web of dependencies” really means. For example, you can’t have existing vegetation cover without Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plot data, USGS lidar data, and NASA satellite imagery. You can’t have fire behavior fuel model assignments without mapping existing vegetation cover, and you can’t have a functioning wildland fire decision support system (WFDSS) without the fuel model assignments. These connections can be hard to explain, but easier to see in a dynamic graphic.

The LANDFIRE Dependency Web is paired with an acronym definition sheet, and static pdf versions of both are available. View or download the graphics at the links below.