Fire history database of the western United States, 1994

To create a database of existing published and unpublished tree-ring reconstructions of fire regimes in forested areas, before circa 1900, west of 100 W longitude in the continental United States, exclusive of Alaska. The studies included in the database are restricted to tree-ring reconstructions of fire history and the information extracted includes citations to the data sources, site information, estimated fire regimes, and information on individual fire events (when readily available). Fire regimes vary greatly across short distances in the western United States, so that a reconstruction of fire history over a small area may not represent the history of a larger area. Therefore, we extracted information on the size of the study area and the amount of fire evidence (number of trees scarred and/or number of tree origin dates) used in computing the fire regimes to allow the user to gauge the applicability of each reconstruction to larger areas.