Fire Perimeters, California (Updated 4/4/2014)

CAL FIRE, USDA Forest Service Region 5, BLM, NPS, Contract Counties and other agencies jointly maintain a comprehensive fire perimeter GIS layer for public and private lands throughout the state. The data covers fires back to 1878. For the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and US Forest Service, fires of 10 acres and greater are reported. For CAL FIRE, timber fires greater than 10 acres, brush fires fires greater than 50 acres, grass fires greater than 300 acres, and fires that destroy three or more residential dwellings or commercial structures are reported.

Use Limitations:

This is the most complete digital record of fire history in California. However it is still incomplete in many respects. Fires may be missing altogether or have missing or incorrect attribute data. Some fires may be missing because historical records were lost or damaged, were too small for the minimum cutoffs, had inadequate documentation or have not yet been incorporated into the database. There are 10 fires with no dates, they are being investigated and will be completed in the next update. The 2008 Lone Pine fire perimeter has been omitted, we hope to include it in the next update.

Other errors with the fire perimeter database include duplicate fires and over-generalization. While the data capture process attempts to identify duplicate fires resulting from multiple data sources (i.e. the USFS and CAL FIRE both captured and submitted the fire perimeter), some duplicates may still exist. Additionally, over-generalization, particularly with large old fires may show unburned "islands" within the final perimeter as burned. Users of the fire perimeter database must exercise caution in application of the data. Careful use of the fire perimeter database will prevent users from drawing inaccurate or erroneous conclusions from the data