Rangeland Fire Behavior and Burn Severity Data from North Dakota

1.7 MB of data supporting an analysis of remotely-sensed burn severity in rangeland fire ecology. The dataset, authored by Devan McGranahan and last updated in May 2026, compares satellite-derived burn severity against field-based fire behavior measurements from prescribed burns and against wildfire severity in similar rangeland.

Use Cases

• Validate satellite-derived burn severity indices (dNBR) based on ground measurements of fire behavior.
• Compare burn severity patterns between prescribed burns and wildfires in similar biophysical settings.
• Analyze the relationship between fire metrics like rate of spread and flame temperature and observed ecological impact.
• Conduct spatial analysis of wildfire perimeters and study regions using the provided geospatial data.

Strengths

• Includes both numerical tabular data and geospatial vector data (GPKG) for integrated analysis.
• Data is supported by provided R scripts for reproducible wrangling and analysis.
• Last updated on 2026-05-15, indicating recent maintenance.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Geographic coverage is limited to North Dakota and biophysically-similar rangeland areas.

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Likely collected from experimental prescribed burns and derived from satellite imagery (e.g., Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio).

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-15 15:27:35; freshness should be verified.

Geography

North Dakota and biophysically-similar rangeland areas for wildfires.