What is WFEIS?
WFEIS is a web application that provides tools for assessments of historical wildland fire emissions across US, Canada, and global boreal regions
WFEIS integrates geospatial burned area, fuel moisture, and fuel loading data layers with the US Forest Service's Consume model to produce emissions inventory estimates.
What about smoke from fires happening right now?
For near real-time and forecast smoke plume modeling for US and Canada, see the US Forest Service's AirFire BlueSky Daily Runs viewer.
Current US fires
The table and map below show locations and emissions estimates of US fires >10 km2 that started within the past 60 days from the NIFC WFIGS current wildland fire perimeters dataset (recalculated daily). Total modeled emissions from these fires :
km2
|
Mg CO2|
Mg PM2.5
| Fire name | State | Start date | Size (km2) | Total PM2.5 (Mg) | Total CO2 (Mg) |
|---|
Year-to-date fire activity by state/province
| As of: | ||||
| Source: | VIIRS VNP64A1 Burned Area Product using FCCS fuelbed system | |||
Updates and versioning history
October 16, 2025
WFEIS version rotated to 2.2025.10. Changes include:- Added VIIRS VNP64A1 Burned Area Product, available from March 2012 through present (available at a 2-3 month time lag similar to MODIS MCD64A1).
- Updated CAL FIRE FRAP perimeters through 2024. Note that this update rebuilt the CAL FIRE burned area dataset from the most recent version available and includes updates from fire records from prior to 2024 as well.
- Updated FCCS->CONSUME fuel loading tables, as provided by FERA. In general these updated loadings are higher than those previously used; see last bullet for specific impact on emissions results.
- Added LANDFIRE 2022 (v230) EVT basemap and LANDFIRE 2023 (v240) EVT and FCCS basemaps. These updates affect all emissions estimates for US burned areas occurring 2024-present for the FCCS fuelbed system and 2023-present for the NAWFD fuelbed system. The LF2024 (v250) basemaps (affecting all fires 2025 onwards) will be added when fully available (as of this update, EVT Hawaii and all of FCCS are not yet available).
- Updated basemap processing years to appropriately represent LANDFIRE (LF) disturbance map updates. Prior to this update, using the LF 2016 basemap as an example, WFEIS used LF 2016 for burned areas occurring January 1, 2016 and later (up until the next basemap version at LF 2020). However, according to LANDFIRE documentation and communication with the LANDFIRE team, the LF 2016 basemap contains disturbances occurring through the end of 2016, and so in WFEIS this basemap should have been used with burned areas occurring January 1, 2017 and later (up until the next basemap version).
This has been corrected with this update and affects emissions estimates for all US burned areas occurring in years 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2021 using the FCCS fuelbed system and years 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2020 using the NAWFD fuelbed system. Since burned areas in these years were previously using a basemap that included fuel disturbances that may have occurred after the burn (including the burn itself), previous WFEIS versions underestimated emissions estimates for these years. - Impact of these updates on emissions calculations in comparison to the previous version (v2.2022.08):
- The overall impact of these changes on WFEIS emissions estimates for the US from 2000-2024 is an increase of 16-17% in comparison to the previous version v2.2022.08. See this page for annual impacts on fuel consumption outputs per year over the US for the MODIS MCD64A1 and MTBS burned area products.
- FCCS->CONSUME fuel loading updates account for an increase in emissions estimates of 5-15% (averaged over the US for a year).
- LANDFIRE disturbance-related recalculations account for an increase in emissions estimates of 20-40% (averaged over the US for each affected year).
- LANDFIRE recent year basemap additions account for an increase in emissions estimates of 0-5% (averaged over the US for a year).
July 6, 2023
Assorted updates (no version change):- Upgraded Consume to FFT v2.0.2029
- Switched over MODIS MCD64A1 Burned Area Product version from v6 to v6.1
- Added capability for global emissions calculations:
- Fuelbed map: Integrated the Global FCCS basemap (Pettinari 2015) and fuelbeds to support queries made outside of US/Canada. Note that if using the calculator, the Global FCCS fuelbed system will be automatically used for any queries that fall outside of US/Canada. To use the Global FCCS fuelbed system for US/Canada queries, it must be manually selected under the EMISSIONS CALCULATION OPTIONS section.
- Burned area data: As of this update, the only global burned area data loaded into WFEIS are in the MODIS MCD64A1 Burned Area product and the NASA CCS Boreal product, and only the northern boreal (>45°N) data for these products have been loaded.
- Emissions calculations: As with all WFEIS emissions calculations, global emissions are calculated using the Consume model, which uses empirical equations generated from North American data, and so validity in areas outside of NA may be limited.
- Fuel moisture inputs: By default all non-US/Canada queries will use Global Fire WEather Database (GFWED) FWI metrics from which 1000-hr, duff, and litter inputs are derived.
August 25, 2022
WFEIS version rotated to 2.2022.08. Changes include:- Added LANDFIRE 2020 (v2.2.0) EVT and FCCS basemaps. This affects all US burned areas occuring after 2019-12-31. See July 11, 2022 update note below for REMAP details.
- Added gridMET daily 4-km gridded data, now serving as the default source for CONSUME's 1000-hr fuel moisture inputs for CONUS.
- For the 1000-hr fuel moisture inputs for Alaska and Canada, the method for translating GFWED Drought Code to 1000-hr fuel moisture was updated from the previously used quartile-to-quartile translation. Linear regression analysis produced a more accurate equation that includes latitude as a covariate.
July 11, 2022
WFEIS version rotated to 2.2022.07. Changes include:- Added optimization fix related to running CONSUME for calculator requests; emissions queries should process much faster now than before.
- Added LANDFIRE 2016 (v2.0.0) EVT and FCCS basemaps
- This affects statistics and calculator results for any US fires occuring after 2015-12-31 for both the FCCS and NAWFD fuelbed systems, which prior to this used the LANDFIRE 2014 (v1.4.0) EVT basemap.
- Because the 2016+ FCCS basemaps include representation of disturbed fuelbeds (and consequently lower fuels), emissions results for queries using the FCCS fuelbed system in the US will be significantly lower than in previous WFEIS versions. The following list indicates the overall emissions decreases resulting from the LF v1.4.0 to LF v2.0.0 update for total US fires 2016-2022 for affected burned area sources:
- MCD64A1: -13% (in comparison to LF v1.4.0)
- WFIGS archive: -16%
- NIFS/GeoMAC: -20%
- ABoVE DoB (Alaska only): -30%
- CAL FIRE (California only): -24%
- Queries using the NAWFD fuelbed system will only be affected to the extent that the LF EVT mapping has changed from one LF version to another; there are no disturbance updates like with the FCCS basemap, and so the differences between the current and previous versions should be minor. More information about EVT differences between different LANDFIRE versions.
- LANDFIRE 2020 (v2.2.0) basemaps will be added for >=2020 fires once the AK and HI datasets are ready.
March 9, 2022
WFEIS version rotated to 2.2022.03. Changes include:- Upgraded Consume to FFT v2.0.2028
- Added Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services (WFIGS) archive (going back to 2020) and current (updated daily) perimeters as a burned area source.
October 16, 2020
WFEIS version rotated to 2.2020.10. Changes include:- Changed system name from Wildland Fire Emissions Information System to Wildland Fire Emissions Inventory System.
- Upgraded Consume to FFT v2.0.2017
- Added CAL FIRE FRAP burn perimeters.
- Added stats page for display of pre-calculated emissions results.
August 21, 2020
WFEIS version rotated to 2.1 with entirely rebuilt backend and interface.- Burned area sources now include MODIS MCD64A1, MTBS, GeoMAC, and the option for user-submitted burn perimeters, all updated to include most recent available data.
- Fuelbed system options now include both FCCS as well as the North American Wildland Fuels Database.
- Upgraded from 1-km to 30-m basemaps (US) for fuelbed mapping.
- Upgraded to Consume v5.0
- Global Fire WEather Database (GFWED) fuel moisture data incorporated.
- Initial beta support for Canada added using the Fuel Behavior Prediciton (FBP) Fuel Type map as a basemap with FBP types crosswalked to existing FCCS fuelbeds.
August 6, 2015
WFEIS version rotated to 0.5. Associated changes include:- Added JSON as optional output format. Example for Colorado, 12-15-11 to 12-30-11, SmartFire2 burned area.
- Updated to Consume 4.2 (details)
- Notably, this update of Consume 4.2 features corrected emissions factors. Previous versions of Consume (and by extension, WFEIS), used some emissions factors with incorrectly specified units (g/kg instead of lb/tons), and so while consumption outputs were valid, emissions outputs were underestimated by roughly one half (e.g. a reported value of 10 kg CO2 should actually have been around 20 kg CO2).
- The FCCS fuelbeds affected by this unit correction comprise 71% of total area burned (MCD64A1), 81% of fuel available within those burned areas, and 82% of total fuel consumption across CONUS for 2001-2013. Unaffected fuel types include shrub/chaparral types exclusive to CONUS and predominantly found in the southwest US.
- The archive and examples pages have been updated with regenerated results that use these corrected emissions factors. Updated results can be found in the "v05_2015-08-01 directory. The previously generated results can still be found in the archive under the "v04_2014-06-01" directory.
June 19, 2014
Website content updates:- Added archive of annual WFEIS emissions estimates in various output formats
- A subset of pre-processed annual model runs are displayed on the Examples page
- Added report comparing GFED and WFEIS to Project Outputs page
- Added help for proper encoding of WFEIS URL queries
March 19, 2014
WFEIS version rotated to 0.4. Associated changes include:- 1-km MODIS-enhanced FCCS added and set to default fuels layer
- Upscaled 1-km Cropland Data Layer-based fuels map added for optional inclusion of agricultural emissions estimates
- More information on how WFEIS incorporates both fuel layers can be found on the WFEIS Fuels Map page.
- Fuel moisture is now based on 40-km gridded estimates from RAWS data rather than interpolation to CEC level II ecoregion
October 2, 2013
WFEIS version rotated to 0.3. Associated changes include:- Burned area datasets added:
- Landsat Daily
- Agricultural NEI
- Smartfire NEI 2011
- Integrated updated Consume 4.1, delivered by FERA
- Added data tables and functionality for calculating agricultural emissions using the Agricultural NEI burned area dataset