Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) is an interagency program mapping the location, extent, and burn severity of large fires across the United States. The dataset includes thousands of mapped fire perimeters and associated burn severity data, made publicly available for the fire science community. Analysis of historical trends up to 2016 showed that burn area and severity had not changed substantially for most vegetation groups.
Use Cases
- Mapping historical fire perimeters based on the described geospatial fire perimeter data.
- Analyzing trends in burn severity over time based on the described historical analysis of vegetation groups.
- Assessing the impact of prescribed fires and wildfires based on the described inclusion of multiple fire types.
- Modeling fire risk and ecological recovery based on the described burn severity and vegetation data.
Strengths
- Includes data on thousands of mapped fires, as stated in the description.
- Covers multiple fire types including wildfires, resource benefit fires, and prescribed fires.
- Produced by an interagency program involving the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- The description references analyses from 2016 and 2020; data freshness should be verified.
Provenance
- Source
- United States Geological Survey (USGS) via the Connecting Health Outcomes Research and Data Systems (CHORDS) organization.
- Collection Method
- Mapped from satellite imagery and other sources as part of the interagency MTBS program.
- Freshness
- Last updated 2026-04-15 13:00:12; freshness should be verified.
- Geography
- United States