Glossary

Program area within the ReSHAPE program, focused on understanding fuel treatment and wildfire interactions.

Program area within the ReSHAPE program, focused on advancing social science understanding and practical application of collaborative, collective decision-making and action-taking using geospatial data and decision-support tools in the area of wildfire management.

In the field of wildfire management, this broadly refers to the different frameworks, models, analysis methods, and tools (i.e., software) that provide information about wildfire risk assessment and treatment prioritization to support strategic, risk-informed pre-fire planning. In general, decision support tools are computer-based systems that provide informational outputs like spatial data layers that characterize areas according to wildfire risk or highlight potential areas for prioritized forest restoration or fuels reduction work.

Fuel treatments, which represent a subset of forest treatments, encompass mechanical, manual, and prescribed or managed fire methods intended to reduce the total quantity or alter the vertical and horizontal arrangement of flammable vegetation. Fuel treatments are commonly, but not always, a component of ecological restoration projects that aim to reverse forest changes associated with historical land use and fire exclusion.

A geodatabase is a centralized storage and management system used to organize spatial data within a geographic information system (GIS). It acts as a primary repository for GIS data – including geographic features, attributes, tabular data, and complex relationships – that can be accessed, managed, and edited by multiple users.

A prescribed fire is a planned fire that is intentionally set by professionals, in an area prepared to burn, to meet management objectives. Prescribed fires are used to reduce the risk of wildfires, improve vegetation and ecosystem health, and restore habitats.

ReSHAPE is a program led by the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes, aimed at compiling and displaying existing information on fuels treatment projects and wildfires at the national level, coordinating and facilitating the use of these data for assessing, planning, and monitoring fuel treatment interactions with wildfires across boundaries, and analyzing and reporting on fuel treatment effects.

The Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) is made up of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI), the Ecological Restoration Institute (ERI), and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI).

The Treatment & Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase.

A public, interactive web-based map viewer used to access, view, and query the data in TWIG.

Program area within the ReSHAPE program, focused on compiling and displaying fuels treatment and wildfire data, and developing and maintaining TWIG and the TWIG Viewer.

A wildfire is an unplanned, uncontrolled, and unpredictable fire that typically ignites in a natural area, such as a forest, grassland, or prairie. While they often begin in wildlands, wildfires can rapidly spread into residential communities and built-up environments. They can start from natural causes, such as lightning, or be ignited by humans, either accidentally or intentionally.

In context to the treatment layer in TWIG, Common Attributes is a subset of activities that occurred on the landscape that were not intentionally designed to address fire risk but impact the landscape in a way that reduce the total quantity or alter the vertical and horizontal arrangement of flammable vegetation.

Cost (in USD) per unit of measure. In many TWIG resources, the unit of measure is typically recorded in “acres,” and this attribute is used to calculate the total cost values for management activities.

The Wildfire Daily Progressions map looks at WFIGS Current Perimeters data on a daily basis, and records any changes from the previous day. These changes are stored in TWIG in order to visualize the daily progression of wildfires over time.

Forest Service Activity Tracking System. This is the system used by the USDA Forest Service to track its completed and planned fuel treatments as well as other activities they complete on the national forests.

This data publication contains a spatial database of wildfires that occurred in the United States from 1992 to 2020. It is the fifth update of a publication originally generated to support the national Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system. The wildfire records were acquired from the reporting systems of federal, state, and local fire organizations.

An interagency application and geospatial decision support tool used to compile fuel treatment data and assess how wildfires interact with prior treatments.

This service includes the Treatment Index Layer and the intersections of those treatments with other features of interest, originating from FACTS and NFPORS for use in the ReSHAPE TWIG viewer. The Intersections table includes preprocessed geographic intersections of wildfires, treatments, and various administrative boundaries for use in the TWIG viewer. The table includes the unique IDs and acres of overlap of the intersecting polygons.

Funding source of a fuel treatment. This attribute groups ‘fund_codes’ from the original databases into 10 major categories defined by SWERI for use in summary statistics (see Funding Sources below).

Hazardous fuels are excessive live or dead wildland vegetation (such as dense trees, brush, grasses, needles, and slash) that accumulates and significantly increases the likelihood of unusually severe or intense wildfire behavior.
In the context of TWIG and federal databases, this term also refers to the specific dataset or feature class of activities of hazardous fuel treatment reduction that count toward the unified hazardous fuels reduction target. USDA Forest Service dataset which represents activities of hazardous fuel treatment reduction that are polygons.

IFPRS (Inform Fuels and Post-fire Reporting System) is the new system replacing NFPORS used by the US Department of the Interior (DOI) to track its completed and planned fuel treatments as well as other activities they complete on their lands.

Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System is a web-based software application designed to help fire and land managers plan, evaluate, and analyze fuel treatments. It integrates various geospatial data sources (such as LANDFIRE) and fire behavior models into a single user interface, allowing practitioners to conduct hazard analyses, assess wildfire risk, and prioritize forest restoration and fuels reduction work across landscapes.

The number of acres burned in a given fire

Type of fire (i.e. wildfire, prescribed burn)

Calendar year in which the given fire occurred

This dataset contains thematic raster images of Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) burn severity classes for all currently completed MTBS fires in the Continental United States (CONUS).

National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System. This is the old system used by the (DOI) to track its completed and planned fuel treatments as well as other activities they complete on their lands.

National Interagency Fire Center

National Wildfire Coordinating Group

Number of acres treated

The database of treatments in TWIG. The Treatment Index Layer includes records from two fuel treatment data sources: the Forest Activity Tracking System (FACTS), managed by the United States Forest Service (USFS), and the National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System (NFPORS), an interagency platform managed by the Department of the Interior (DOI) in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Name of treatment

A specific description of the type of activity performed according to the source data record (i.e. thinning, pile burn, prescribed fire)

Calendar year treatment was completed Watershed Boundary/HUC: A hydrologic unit code is a numbering system that identifies watersheds in the United States. The number of digits depends on the level of classification. 2-digit: regions, 4-digit: subregions, 6-digit: basins, 8-digit: subbasins, 10-digit: watersheds, 12-digit: subwatersheds.

Wildland Fire Decision Support System

Wildland Fire Interagency Geospatial Services

Wildland Fire Management Research, Development, & Application

Name of wildfire

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding

Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration funding

Cooperative Work Knutson-Vandenberg funding

Good Neighbor Program funding

Harvest Activity funding

Hazardous Fuels Reduction funding

Treatment has multiple funding sources, view fund_code attribute for full funding information.

National Forest System funding

Treatment has no funding code listed in original database

Treatment funding code does not fit into the above categories. View fund_code attribute for funding information.

The use of living organisms to selectively suppress, inhibit, or remove herbaceous and woody vegetation. Plant eating organisms excludes grazing animals such as goats and sheep. Any of the treatments may be considered stand-alone treatments or may be followed by burning debris piles or prescribed burning the treatment site.

A Mechanical treatment type achieved through harvest, sale, offer, trade or utilization of trees and woody biomass, including limbs, tops, needles, leaves and other woody parts. Removal may result in the production of the full range of wood products, including timber, engineered lumber, paper and pulp, furniture and value-added commodities, and bio-energy and/or bio-based products such as plastics, ethanol, and diesel.

Prescribed burning treatment where fire is applied generally to most or all of an area within well-defined boundaries for reduction of Hazardous Fuels, as a resource management treatment, or both.

The application of a pesticide (insecticide or herbicide) to control or kill pest species.

Use of a stationary machine for chipping small trees, limbs, tops, and brush; chips are larger and courser than sawdust. Treated fuels are usually moved to a central location for chipping, and can be scattered or blown back into the woods or transported to an off-site location.

A treatment that is typically applied to woody material that is already on the ground. The primary objective is usually to break up and compact the material. The compaction of slash and brush by machinery. In areas, the chopping of slash and provision of microsites are considered important features of this treatment.

The application of the appropriate management response to naturally-ignited wildland fires to accomplish specific resource Management Objectives in pre-defined designated areas outlined in Fire Management Plans. Operational management is described in the Wildland Fire Implementation Plan.

The eating of any kind of standing vegetation by animals. Grazing management is the manipulation of grazing or browsing animals to accomplish a desired result.

Piles of slash (vegetative debris from hazardous fuel reduction projects) constructed; by hand, of such size and at such distance from trees so that burning won’t result in unnecessary damage to residual timber, and with construction of a fire line to bare mineral soil.

To deliberately burn hand piles under specified environmental conditions, which allows the fire to be confined to the perimeter of the hand pile area and produces the intensity required to attain planned fuel reduction objectives.

A prescribed fire to deliberately burn natural or modified concentrations (jackpots) of wildland fuels under specified environmental conditions, which allows the fire to be confined to a predetermined area and produces the fire line intensity and rate of spread required to attain planned resource management objectives.

Felling trees, then cutting branches, tops, and unwanted boles into lengths and spreading debris more or less evenly over the ground.

To deliberately burn machine pile(s) under specified environmental conditions, which allows the fire to be confined to the perimeter of the machine pile area and produces the intensity required to attain planned fuel reduction objectives.

Shredding, grinding, or chopping trees and other vegetation, then spreading on the ground to decompose.

Chopping, grinding, and/or mowing treatments, usually by mechanical means, to reduce fuel bed depth or crowning potential. The primary target is usually live fuels, such as brush and small trees, but can be used in light loadings of dead fuels. Treatments are done “in unit”, with fuels left in place.

The distribution of seed by hand or machine to achieve approved land management objectives, such as soil stabilization, revegetation, native plant establishment or invasive species control.

A treatment made to reduce forest or woodland density of trees primarily to improve growth, enhance forest health, recover potential mortality or reduce hazardous fuels. Treatment can be by hand tools, such as chainsaw, machete, sandvik brush axes or brush hooks, or mechanical thinning using feller-bunchers or a cut-to-length system.

How often is this glossary updated?
As wildfire science and federal data reporting evolve, so does our glossary. We iteratively update these definitions to reflect current research from our four program areas: Social Science, Biophysical Effects, Data Science, and Economics.

The TWIG viewer includes millions of records, some of which may use legacy or agency-specific shorthand. If you encounter a term that is unclear, please reach out to us via our Contact page, and our team will be happy to provide clarification.

While the terms are often used interchangeably, a Fuel Treatment refers to the specific activity (like thinning or prescribed fire) performed on the land. Hazardous Fuels (HF) often refers to the specific funding category or the primary management intent behind a project.

Most of our definitions are aligned with official federal systems of record, such as the USDA Forest Service’s FACTS database and the Department of the Interior’s IFPRS. This consistency allows our data to be “cross-walked” and compared on a national basis.

The terms in this glossary represent the core language used by federal land management agencies and our own multidisciplinary research teams. We include these definitions to ensure that every user – regardless of their background – can accurately interpret the maps and datasets provided within the TWIG viewer.