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FIRED (Fire Event Reconstruction and Discussion)

What this dataset is

FIRED provides event-level and per-day fire perimeter polygons for the conterminous United States and Alaska from November 2001 to March 2021. Daily footprints track fire growth through time, while event tables summarize ignition, containment, and size.

Quickstart

Get the stream (CubeDynamics grammar)

import cubedynamics as cd
from cubedynamics import pipe, verbs as v

fired_evt = cd.fired_event(event_id=21281)
clim = cd.gridmet(
    lat=fired_evt.centroid_lat,
    lon=fired_evt.centroid_lon,
    start=str(fired_evt.t0.date()),
    end=str(fired_evt.t1.date()),
    variable="tmmx",
)

pipe(clim) | v.extract(fired_event=fired_evt) | v.fire_plot(fired_event=fired_evt)

Preview plot

FIRED preview

!!! note Image placeholder — after running the code below locally, save a screenshot to docs/assets/datasets/fired-preview.png.

Regenerate this plot

  1. Execute the Quickstart code to load the FIRED event and matching gridMET slice.

  2. Collect the viewer returned from the pipe for export:

    python viewer = ( pipe(clim) | v.extract(fired_event=fired_evt) | v.fire_plot(fired_event=fired_evt) ).unwrap() viewer.save("docs/assets/datasets/fired-preview.html")

  3. Open docs/assets/datasets/fired-preview.html in a browser and save a 1200×700 px PNG screenshot to docs/assets/datasets/fired-preview.png.

Who collects it and why

FIRED was assembled by Balch, Iglesias, and collaborators to provide a consistent, research-grade record of wildland fire events for studying drivers, impacts, and fire–climate interactions. Its coverage and methodological transparency make it a common reference for fire science in North America.

How CubeDynamics accesses it

FIRED layers are pulled from a CU Scholar ZIP archive, extracted on-the-fly, and cached locally in a user directory. Functions load the requested layer (events or daily perimeters), reproject to EPSG:4326, and return GeoDataFrames ready to intersect with climate cubes. Users can opt into automatic downloads or rely on pre-populated cache files for offline analysis.

Important variables and dimensions

Field Meaning Units
id FIRED event identifier unitless
date Observation date for daily perimeters ISO date
geometry Polygon footprint in EPSG:4326 degrees
area_ha (if present) Burned area for the polygon hectares

Citation

Balch, J. K., Iglesias, V., Braswell, A., Rossi, M. W., Joseph, M. B., Mahood, A., Arkle, R. S., & Boer, M. M. (2020). FIRED: A global fire event database. Scientific Data, 7, 164. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-0524-5

See also: Fire event vase + climate merge (fire_plot)

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