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Download Southeast FireMap Datasets

Source: R/get_sefire.R
get_sefire.Rd

Downloads Southeast FireMap (SE FireMap) data products from the USGS and the SE FireMap S3 archive to a local directory. Four dataset options are available: annual Burn Severity mosaics (one ZIP per year), a single-file Fire History map, Burned Area Polygons, or Burned Area Rasters. If a ZIP already exists and overwrite = FALSE, no network call is made.

Usage

get_sefire(
  dataset = c("Burn Severity", "Fire History", "Burned Area Polygons",
    "Burned Area Rasters"),
  years = NULL,
  directory = getwd(),
  overwrite = FALSE,
  timeout = 3600,
  verbose = TRUE
)

Arguments

dataset

character(1) the SE FireMap product to download. One of "Burn Severity" (default), "Fire History", "Burned Area Polygons", or "Burned Area Rasters". "Burn Severity" downloads one ZIP per year from USGS and requires the years argument. The remaining three products cover 1994–2024 as a single ZIP each and do not use years.

years

integer vector of years to download. Used only when dataset = "Burn Severity". Accepts a single year (2020), a contiguous range created with : notation (2010:2015), or a vector of specific years (c(2000, 2010, 2020)). All values must be between 2000 and 2022 (inclusive). Duplicate years are silently ignored. Ignored for all other datasets.

directory

character(1) directory where the ZIP file(s) are saved. Defaults to the current working directory.

overwrite

logical(1) re-download when TRUE; defaults to FALSE.

timeout

numeric(1) download timeout in seconds. Defaults to 3600 (one hour).

verbose

logical(1) print progress messages.

Value

For dataset = "Burn Severity": a character vector of paths to the downloaded ZIP files (returned invisibly), one element per unique year requested. For all other datasets: a character(1) path to the downloaded ZIP file (returned invisibly).

Details

The southeastern United States experiences frequent wild and prescribed fire activity. The USGS developed a gradient-boosted decision tree model trained on over 5,000 Composite Burn Inventory (CBI) field plots to predict post-fire burn severity as a CBI value (0–3) across the region. The model ingests ARD Landsat predictors capturing first- and second-order fire effects, climate norms, and fire seasonality, then applies the trained model to the extent of burned area identified by the Landsat Burned Area Product. The result is an annual burn severity mosaic covering 78 ARD Landsat tiles across the southeastern United States for years 2000–2022.

The SE FireMap Fall 2024 release additionally provides a Fire History Map (1994–2024), Burned Area Polygons (1994–2024), and Burned Area Raster grids (1994–2024) as single-file geodatabase ZIPs. Year selection is not applicable to these three products; the years argument is silently ignored when they are requested.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Burn Severity -- single year
zip_path <- get_sefire(years = 2010)

# Burn Severity -- contiguous range (2015 through 2020)
zip_paths <- get_sefire(years = 2015:2020, directory = "data/sefire")

# Burn Severity -- specific years only
zip_paths <- get_sefire(years = c(2000, 2010, 2020))

# Fire History (1994-2024)
zip_path <- get_sefire(dataset = "Fire History", directory = "data/sefire")

# Burned Area Polygons (1994-2024)
zip_path <- get_sefire(dataset = "Burned Area Polygons", directory = "data/sefire")

# Burned Area Rasters (1994-2024)
zip_path <- get_sefire(dataset = "Burned Area Rasters", directory = "data/sefire")
} # }