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To create a database of existing published and unpublished tree-ring reconstructions of fire regimes in forested areas, before circa 1900, west of 100 W longitude in the continental United States, exclusive of Alaska.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.

本数据集旨在构建一座数据库，收录美国大陆（不含阿拉斯加）西经100°以西、约1900年之前已发表及未发表的林区火状况（fire regimes）树轮重建研究成果。本数据库收录的研究仅限定于火历史树轮重建相关内容，提取的信息包括数据来源引文、样地信息、估算得到的火状况，以及（若可便捷获取）单个火灾事件的相关记录。美国西部的火状况在短距离范围内差异显著，因此小尺度区域的火历史重建结果未必能代表更大范围区域的火历史。为此，我们提取了研究区域的面积，以及用于计算火状况的火证据量（即带有火疤的树木数量和/或树木起源定年数），以便使用者评估每项重建结果对更大范围区域的适用性。