Fuel and fuel consumption maps for the Kaibab Plateau in 2012, 2019, and 2020

These maps were created to estimate fuel loads across the Kaibab Plateau and fuel consumption across the 2019 Castle and Ikes Fires in northern Arizona, USA. For details on how these maps were created, see Bright et al. (2022) “Multitemporal lidar captures heterogeneity in fuel loads and consumption on the Kaibab Plateau”. SUMMARY: Airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data were acquired across the Kaibab Plateau in northern Arizona, USA, in 2012 and 2019. To measure post-fire vegetation and fuels, airborne lidar data were also acquired in 2020 across the 2019 Castle Fire and portion of the 2019 Ikes Fire extent. Field observations of fuels that were temporally (within 2 years) and spatially coincident with these lidar acquisitions were predicted from airborne lidar metrics and Landsat-derived fire history metrics with random forest (RF) models. RF models were then applied to 20-m lidar and Landsat metric grids to create maps of total surface fuel (TSF) and available canopy fuel (ACF) loads for each lidar acquisition (years 2012, 2019, 2020). Fuel consumption maps for the 2019 Castle Fire and portion of the 2019 Ikes Fire were created by subtracting the 2020 fuel load maps from the 2019 fuel load maps. Except in small areas that burned severely, ACF consumption tended to be neutral or negative (i.e., ACF remained the same or increased between 2019 and 2020) for these predominantly low-severity fires. ACF is defined here as foliage weight plus 50% of small branch weight. TSF is defined here as the sum of 1 to 1000-hr, litter and duff fuel loads. Fuel load maps are named using the following convention: VARIABLE_AREA_YEAR.tif where VARIABLE is the acronym for the mapped variable (ACF: available canopy fuel, TSF: total surface fuel), AREA is either ‘Castle’, ‘Ikes’, or ‘NKaibab’, and YEAR is either ‘2012’, ‘2019’, or ‘2020’. Fuel load consumption maps representing fuel consumption by the 2019 Castle and Ikes Fires follow the same naming convention as above but include CONSUMP in the name, i.e., VARIABLE_CONSUMP_AREA_YEAR.tif. UNITS The units for all maps are megagrams per hectare. COORDINATE REFERENCE SYSTEM The reference system for all maps is EPSG 26912.