Objective: Identify areas where significant fuel buildup has occurred due to fire suppression, extensive mortality due to natural or anthropogenic causes, or for other reasons. Data: The Wildland Hazard Potential (WHP) represents areas of significant fuel buildup. It is an index that quantifies the relative potential for wildfire that may be difficult to manage, and is used as a measure to help prioritize where fuel treatments may be needed. The WHP is a raster geospatial product produced by the USFS Fire Modeling Institute in the Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Program. Higher values have a higher probability of high-intensity fire, with torching, crowning, and other forms of extreme fire behavior. Data used to represent this metric are areas classified as “high” or “very high” risk. A mask for non-burnable areas is applied to focus on ecosystems with vegetation that can be modified through management to reduce hazard. Format: Raster data are binary: (1) “high” or “very high” risk or (0). Resolution: 270m. Source: The WHP data are part of the Wildfire Risk to Communities suite of data along with several other data products. More information on the data used for the 2024 assessment can be found here: Scott, Joe H.; Dillon, Gregory K.; Jaffe, Melissa R.; Vogler, Kevin C.; Olszewski, Julia H.; Callahan, Michael N.; Karau, Eva C.; Lazarz, Mitchell T.; Short, Karen C.; Riley, Karin L.; Finney, Mark A.; Grenfell, Isaac C. 2024. Wildfire Risk to Communities: Spatial datasets of landscape-wide wildfire risk components for the United States. 2nd Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2020-0016-2. Links for data used in previous year TCA assessments: 2020-2022 [https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/Catalog/RDS-2020-0016], 2023 [https://www.fs.usda.gov/rds/archive/catalog/RDS-2015-0047-4].

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Objective: Identify areas where significant fuel buildup has occurred due to fire suppression, extensive mortality due to natural or anthropogenic causes, or for other reasons.

Data: The Wildland Hazard Potential (WHP) represents areas of significant fuel buildup. It is an index that quantifies the relative potential for wildfire that may be difficult to manage, and is used as a measure to help prioritize where fuel treatments may be needed. The WHP is a raster geospatial product produced by the USFS Fire Modeling Institute in the Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Program. Higher values have a higher probability of high-intensity fire, with torching, crowning, and other forms of extreme fire behavior. Data used to represent this metric are areas classified as “high” or “very high” risk. A mask for non-burnable areas is applied to focus on ecosystems with vegetation that can be modified through management to reduce hazard.

Data Format: Raster data are binary: (1) “high”, or “very high” risk or (0) other

Spatial Resolution: 30m (*data for 2023 assessment is 270m)

Source data: The WHP data are part of the Wildfire Risk to Communities suite of data along with several other data products. More information on the data used for the 2024 assessment can be found here. Links for data used in previous year TCA assessments: 2020-2022 , 2023. Three different versions of LANDFIRE data were used over the years: LF 2014 NGDA US_140_FRG (2020 and 2021), LF 2016 LC16_BPS_200 (2022 and 2023), and LF 2020 LC20_BPS_220 (2024)

Additional Resources:

Details on Method Changes and Source Data Versions

Overview of the Terrestrial Condition Assessment: TCA Hubsite or Landfire Office Hour Presentation

Explore the results of the most recent assessment: TCA Interactive Data Viewer

Learn more about the TCA KPI: Dashboard link when available