North American tree-ring fire-scar site descriptions

Fire size and severity continue to increase across large parts of North America, driven by a combination of climate change and effects of human land use. Instrumental records are too short to fully understand patterns, trends, and drivers of fire that are necessary to model future fire. Tree-ring fire scars provide centuries-long records of fire regimes, including fire frequency, season, size, and fire-climate relationships. We compiled fire-scar site descriptions from greater than 100 researchers across the continent to produce the first North American tree-ring fire-scar network. These data provide descriptive information for all known tree-ring fire-scar sites in North America. Data fields include location, name, area and species sampled, years of the tree-ring fire-scar chronology, and references.