New methods provide a 300–year perspective on modern area burned in two wilderness areas of the southwest United States

Climate change and increased fuels from fire exclusion drive recent increases in area burned and fire severity in dry conifer forests of the western United States. Recent increases in area burned are occurring against the backdrop of a large fire deficit caused by over a century of fire exclusion. A key land management question is whether fire regimes can be restored – i.e., can the fire deficit be paid off? Accurate estimates of historical area burned prior to fire exclusion (circa 1900) are difficult to derive and have rarely been calibrated or validated against modern fires, leaving their accuracy uncertain. In this study, we applied multiple time-series methods to tree-ring fire-scar data for the first time, including a multi-model ensemble, time-varying predictor subset calibration, and multiple measures of model uncertainty and validation. We focused on two southwestern U.S. wilderness areas – Saguaro National Park (SAGU) and the Gila Wilderness (GILA) – that have abundant and wel..., , , # Data from: New methods provide a 300–year perspective on modern area burned in two wilderness areas of the southwest United States

**Description of the data and file structure**

These files contain all spatial layers (in ArcGIS shapefile format) used to conduct this study, including the fire atlas data maps, fire ignition point files, and the study area boundaries. They are organized by study area into two directories -- GILA and SAGU.

The fire perimeter data were obtained from Saguaro National Park, and the Gila National Forest.

**SPATIAL DATA:**

These files contain all spatial layers (in ArcGIS shapefile format) used to conduct this study, including the fire atlas data maps, fire ignition point files, and the study area boundaries. They are organized by study area into two directories:

SAGU Directory:

* SAGU_CoreStudyArea.zip – the outline of the SAGU study area. It has XML which is ArcGIS metadata for a shapefile named SAGU_CoreStudyArea, describing its creation, lineage, di...,