The purpose of the LANDFIRE Project is to map and model vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics across the United States in an efficient and affordable manner. To successfully complete this task, we first selected two prototype areas in which to research, develop, evaluate, and test methods for mapping vegetation and fuel for the entire country. The prototype areas were selected based on ecological diversity (a mixture of forested and non-forested communities), availability of Landsat imagery, ample existing field data, availability of previous research, and availability of an extensive network of experts.

Prototype Zone 16 spans over seven million hectares in the central Rockies of Utah and is 55 percent forested land and 45 percent non-forested land. This was the primary prototype area used to develop and demonstrate all LANDFIRE products. Prototype Zone 19 covers over ten and a half million hectares in the central Rockies of Montana and north central Idaho and is 65 percent forested land and 35 percent non-forested land. This secondary prototype area was used to test and refine the methods for creating the LANDFIRE products.

The LANDFIRE Prototype began in the spring of 2002 and was completed in spring of 2005.

RMRS-GTR-175, The LANDFIRE Prototype Project: nationally consistent and locally relevant geospatial data for wildland fire management, was published in the fall of 2006. This report describes the scientific foundations of LANDFIRE and provides details on the methods and results of the LANDFIRE Prototype Project.

Please visit Rocky Mountain Research Station Publications to access a pdf file of the entire publication or individual chapters.