Integrated Wildland and Cropland Fuel Characteristics Map for the U.S., 2010

2010 fuelbed characteristics map for the conterminous United States at 30-meter resolution. This integrated product combines the U.S. Forest Service's Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) data with the USDA's Cropland Data Layer (CDL) to characterize fuels in both wildland and agricultural areas. The merged map is designed to improve emissions estimates from burned areas.

Use Cases

• Estimating emissions from wildfires based on integrated fuel characteristics for wildland and cropland.
• Modeling fire behavior and risk using spatially discrete fuelbed data.
• Analyzing land cover and fuel type relationships across the conterminous U.S.
• Validating or improving regional-scale fire emissions inventories.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution (30 meters) for the entire conterminous United States.
• Integrates two authoritative sources: USFS FCCS and USDA CDL data.
• Specifically includes fuel characteristics for agricultural areas, which are often omitted.

Limitations

• Data is from a single year (2010) and may not reflect current conditions.
• File sizes are extremely large (20-30 GB per GeoTIFF), requiring specialized software and storage.
• Metadata completeness is low; specific column names and row counts are not provided.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), combining U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data.

Collection Method

Integration of the spatially discrete Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) with the crop-and grassland-specific Cropland Data Layer (CDL).

Time Range

2010

Freshness

2026-04-10 00:35:07.529609

Geography

Conterminous United States (CONUS)