What is WFEIS?
WFEIS is a web application that provides both data and a calculator for assessments of historical wildland fire emissions across the US**
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.
WFEIS does not provide real-time emissions assessments of active fires, although users can use the calculator to submit their own active perimeter data and input known fuel moistures for rapid assessment. For near real-time and forecast emissions and plume information, see the US Forest Service's AirFire BlueSky Daily Runs viewer.
**Support for Canada is currently available in beta stage
Year-to-date fire activity
| As of: | |
| Source: | MODIS MCD64A1 Burned Area Product (v6) using FCCS fuelbed system |
| US totals: |
Updates and versioning history
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