U.S. Wildfire Occurrences 1992-2020

2.3 million geo-referenced wildfire records represent 180 million acres burned across the United States from 1992 to 2020. The database, a sixth edition supporting the Fire Program Analysis system, includes core data elements like discovery date, final fire size, and precise point locations.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in final fire size and discovery date to model annual burned acreage over the 29-year period.
• Map wildfire point locations to identify geographic hotspots and correlate with land management units.
• Link records using included identifiers to published large-fire-perimeter datasets for comprehensive fire history analysis.
• Apply the updated wildfire-cause standard to study the distribution and frequency of different ignition sources.

Strengths

• Contains 2.3 million spatially explicit wildfire records, providing a substantial sample for analysis.
• Covers a 29-year temporal range (1992-2020), enabling long-term trend studies.
• Data conforms to National Wildfire Coordinating Group standards, including an updated 2020 cause classification.
• Core data elements like discovery date and final fire size were required for inclusion, ensuring a consistent baseline.

Limitations

• Records are limited to fires meeting specific reporting criteria, potentially omitting very small or unreported incidents.
• Point location precision is limited to at least a 1-square mile grid, which may not be suitable for hyper-local analysis.
• Relies on reporting from multiple agencies, which may introduce inconsistencies in data collection methods over time.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service.

Collection Method

Acquired from federal, state, and local fire organization reporting systems, transformed to NWCG standards, with error-checking and deduplication applied.

Time Range

1992 to 2020.

Freshness

Data current through 2020; metadata was last updated in April 2025.

Geography

United States.