MIL-OSI USA: Landsat at Work: Satellites Help Extinguish Wildfire Risk

The LANDFIRE project uses Landsat satellite data to map wildland fuels. When combined with information about weather and population, LANDFIRE data can then be used to map wildfire risk. 

The Community Wildfire Defense Grant program uses LANDFIRE-based wildfire risk data available on the Wildfire Risk to Communities website, wildfirerisk.org, a Forest Service program mandated by Congress in 2018.

“Since wildfirerisk.org launched in 2020, there have been 2 million views of the website,” said Kelly Pohl, associate director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group that helps manage the user dashboard.  “LANDFIRE is a fundamental building block for what we do at wildfirerisk.org, and without it, it would be nearly impossible to continue to map wildfire risk for the country.”

LANDFIRE data is available at no charge on its website LANDFIRE.gov, a website at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center. 

Another example of LANDFIRE data helping save lives and property comes from four Montana counties that commissioned an assessment of their risk for wildfires, paid for in part by a grant from CWDG. The four counties—Gallatin, Park, Stillwater and Carbon—all include parts of the Custer-Gallatin National Forest and touch several wilderness areas. Two of the counties border Yellowstone National Park.

Protecting homes and people’s lives amid so much forestland is a major concern, said Patrick Lonergan, chief of Emergency Management and Fire for Gallatin County. “Rarely does the main body of a fire burn into a community and burn the community down,” he said. “The main body of the fire produces embers because of the fuel makeup and the intensity of the fire, which then launches embers, starting spot fires and directly igniting buildings.” 

Vibrant Planet, the company conducting the assessment, uses LANDFIRE data to map fuels—the plant life on the ground that might burn—and then adds more data like wind and weather conditions to predict what it calls Sources of Ember Load to Buildings.

Once potential sources of embers are identified, communities can target those areas strategically before a wildfire even starts in order to prevent homes and other personal property from burning.

In 2024, the project started releasing annual LANDFIRE updates. “If you’re not making your decisions based on good, usable data, then you’re just sort of punching in the dark,” Brooks said. “The LANDFIRE datasets and the website are valuable tools to help you make smart decisions.”

LANDFIRE will gain even more insight in the future with the next generation of Landsat. A trio of satellites is planned to launch in late 2030/early 2031 as Landsat Next, capturing far more detail about features of the Earth’s surface more frequently than current Landsat satellites. “LANDFIRE welcomes every bit of data Landsat Next will provide, especially the expanded infrared capabilities that will help gauge the health of vegetation as well as potentially help differentiate additional vegetation types. I’m also hopeful new methods for analysis of fire damage will spring from the expanded bands keyed towards this very problem,” said LANDFIRE Project Manager Jon Dewitz.