Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire (RAVG) Thematic Burn Severity Mosaic for CONUS in 2021

The RAVG (Rapid Assessment of Vegetation Condition after Wildfire) program provides assessments of vegetation conditions following large fires on forested lands. Fire effects are represented by three metrics: percent change in live basal area (BA), percent change in canopy cover (CC), and the standardized Composite Burn Index (CBI). These data are derived from moderate resolution multi-spectral imagery (e.g., Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager or Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument). The Relative Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR), which is correlated to the variation of burn severity within a fire, is calculated from a pair of images (pre- and postfire), judiciously selected to capture fire effects. The three-severity metrics are in turn calculated from RdNBR using regression equations developed from and calibrated with historical field data. This map layer is a thematic raster image of MTBS burn severity classes for all inventoried fires occurring in CONUS during calendar year 2021. Fires omitted from this mapped inventory are those where suitable satellite imagery was not available, or fires were not discernable from available imagery.