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This is a Non-Federal dataset covered by different Terms of Use than Data.gov.

Explore California Historical Wildland Fire Perimeters App

Metadata Updated: September 23, 2025

CAL FIRE's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) annually maintains and distributes an historical fire perimeter dataset from across public and private lands in California. The GIS data is developed with the cooperation of the United States Forest Service Region 5, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and is released in the spring with added data from the previous calendar year. Although the dataset represents the most complete digital record of fire perimeters in California, it is still incomplete, and users should be cautious when drawing conclusions based on the data.

This app contains three pages of maps and documentation of the historical fire perimeter metadata:

Historical Fire Perimeters: The landing page highlights the recent large fires (≥5,000 acres) on a backdrop of all of the dataset's documented fire perimeters dating back to 1878.  This map includes perimeters symbolized by decade, county boundaries, California Vegetation, and NAIP imagery back to 2005.  This page provides users the ability to add their own data or filter the fire perimeter data.  It cleanly lists fire perimeters shown on the map with their name, year, and GIS calculated acreage.  The user can navigate to the CAL FIRE current incident webpage or provide comments to the dataset's steward.

Times Burned: The second page provides a map showing an analysis performed annually on the fire perimeter dataset to show case burn frequency from 1950 to present for fires greater than one acre. 

Fire Across Time:  This third page provides a time enabled layer of the fire perimeter dataset, featuring a time slider to allow users to view the perimeter dataset across time.

The final page provides the user with the dataset's metadata, including its most current data dictionary.

For any questions, please contact the data steward:Kim Wallin, GIS SpecialistCAL FIRE, Fire & Resource Assessment Program (FRAP)kimberly.wallin@fire.ca.gov

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. Non-Federal: This dataset is covered by different Terms of Use than Data.gov. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date November 27, 2024
Metadata Updated Date September 23, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from State of California

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date November 27, 2024
Metadata Updated Date September 23, 2025
Publisher CAL FIRE
Maintainer
Identifier 8d64fada-0481-4ccf-8b67-7143628181cb
Data First Published 2024-06-06T17:05:17.000Z
Data Last Modified 2025-05-08T21:46:15.000Z
Category Fire, Natural Resources
Public Access Level public
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 15b421e4-06e0-47f6-bffc-50d0cf81846d
Harvest Source Id 3ba8a0c1-5dc2-4897-940f-81922d3cf8bc
Harvest Source Title State of California
License http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash ac02a443db64e205d8618292ed6dac9a52ec4a0861434b1923b14c5a0cd85151
Source Schema Version 1.1

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