4 Input Data
4.1 LANDFIRE for Landscape Ecosystem Assessments
To support the assessment of a forest’s conditions, including attributes such as Environmental Impacts of management and identifying and maintaining High Conservation Value Areas, we will consider:
- Change between historical and current ecosystem condition.
- The representation of ecosystems within and outside of your landscape of interest.
- Change in Succession Classes (aka seral states) of communities over time.
These steps, while foundational and conceptually simple, can be difficult due to a lack of data, especially when the study area of interest is large scale, occurs across multiple land ownerships, or is subject to land cover change. Using LANDFIRE spatial models overcomes this data barrier by providing a suite of terrestrial data appropriate for landscape scale analysis.
4.2 LANDFIRE Datasets Used For This Tutorial
- Spatial datasets, clipped to your area(s) of interest
- Biophysical Settings (BpS). This dataset will be used to look at “community habitat”, or where ecosystems could occur based on abiotic factors (e.g., soils, climate and natural disturbance regimes).
- Succession classes. This dataset characterizes structural classes on the landscape at the time the dataset represents (e.g., 2016 for LF Version 200).
- Existing Vegetation Type. This dataset maps NatureServe’s Ecological Systems (see descriptions here).
- Non-spatial products
- Biophysical Settings Descriptions These descriptions have information on natural disturbance regimes and succession class descriptions (also available here).
- Reference Condition Table supplements the BpS descriptions with the “reference” percentages for each succession class, for each Biophysical Settings.
- Biophysical Settings Descriptions These descriptions have information on natural disturbance regimes and succession class descriptions (also available here).
4.3 Guidance on Obtaining LANDFIRE Products
There are multiple ways to get LANDFIRE products depending on whether you are looking to obtain BpS models, their descriptions, or the spatial data:
- For BpS models and descriptions go to: http://landfirereview.org/search.php. Start by clicking on the “View map of LANDFIRE Map Zones”. This will help you narrow down your search. Alternatively, you can wait to download BpS descriptions until you do some GIS work and get specific names of BpSs of interest.
- For the spatial datasets you can explore options here which include:
- Downloading Full Extent Mosaics. When you do use this option you get large files that cover the entire lower 48, AK or HI (depending on your selection). We use this method when we have several landscapes and/or a large area and no computer storage issues.
- Using the LANDFIRE Data Distribution Site. With this method you essentially select the datasets you need then draw a rectangle (or you can select state or counties) around your area of interest to start the downloader. We recommend this if your area of interest is not too large and/or you have a low number of landscapes and/or have storage limits. Please note that LANDFIRE has gone through an update as of 2022. As a result, raster files are no longer delivered in ARCGRID formats. All LANDFIRE raster files are now delivered as TIFF with attributes.
If you still need more assistance in downloading LANDFIRE products, please see the appendix for some tips and screenshots!