Science activity

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) assesses the amount and extent of California's forests and rangelands, analyzes their conditions and identifies alternative management and policy guidelines. The Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) compiles fire perimeters and has established an on-going fire perimeter data capture process. CAL FIRE, the United States Forest Service Region 5, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service jointly develop the fire perimeter GIS layer for public and private lands throughout California at the end of the calendar year. Upon release, the data is current as of the last calendar year. This is a multi-agency statewide database of fire history. For CAL FIRE, timber fires 10 acres or greater, brush fires 30 acres and greater, and grass fires 300 acres or greater are included. For the USFS, there is a 10 acre minimum for fires since 1950. This dataset contains wildfire history, prescribed burns and other fuel modification projects. The fire perimeter database represents the most complete digital record of fire perimeters in California. However it is still incomplete in many respects. Fire perimeter database users must exercise caution to avoid inaccurate or erroneous conclusions. The fire perimeters database is an ESRI ArcGIS file geodatabase with three data layers (feature classes): A layer depicting wildfire perimeters from contributing agencies current as of the previous fire year; A layer depicting prescribed fires supplied from contributing agencies current as of the previous fire year; A layer representing non-prescribed fire fuel reduction projects that were initially included in the database. Fuels reduction projects that are non prescribed fire are no longer included.