Larger and more frequent wildfires are cause for concern.¶
Over the last few decades, wildfires have increased in both number and size across North America (Schoennagel et al., 2017). Regions such as the western United States have been hit particularly hard, where the problem is exacerbated by changes in climate, vegetation, and landuse. Not only are more swaths of land burning each year, but with urban sprawl forcing more people to build homes at and beyond the wildland-urban interface, increasing populations are put at risk of disaster.
In the 20th century, fire supression policies because a standard practice of land management agencies in an attempt to control the ignition and growth of wildfires. Unfortuntely the enforcement of these practices sequested other traditional fire management practices of native and indigenous groups, leaving many of these groups more vulnerable. Through out native and indigenous histories, the practice of cultural burning - the intentional lighting of small, controlled fires to provide desired cultural and ecological services - was intrinsic to daily life and promoted a thriving ecosystem (National Park Service, 2023). Without cultural burns, build up of organic matter, debris, and/or tree falls in the landscape put these once managed landscapes and communities at risk of devasting fires. While these practices are slowly reestablishing their role in fire management, there is still a long way to go.
Wildfire near U.S. 99 in Del Norte County, CA (credit: Fox 12)
Native American Areas Dataset Description¶
The United States Geologic Survey (USGS) maintains a National Boundary Dataset (NBD) covering all 50 states and U.S. territories. The NBD includes boundaries including, but not limited to, political boundaries, national land holdings, U.S. Bureau holdings, military areas, and reserves managed by native communities. The Native American Area boundaries dataset within the NBD are derived from the U.S. Census Bureau. These boundaries come from the Bureau's 2017 Boundary and Annexation Survey and is a combination of two datasets that include the American Indian/Alaska Native/ Native Hawaiian Areas national data and the Alaska Native Regional Corporation state-based data. Combined, these two datasets capture federally recognized American Indian reservations and off-reservation trust land areas, state-recognized American Indian reservations, Hawaiian homelands, and 12 Alaska Native Regional Corporations.
Data Citation: U.S. Geological Survey, National Geospatial Technical Operations Center, 2023, National Boundary Dataset (NBD), Native American Areas - USGS National Map Downloadable Data Collection: U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia. Published 08/28/2023. Accessed 10/18/2023.
Wildfire Dataset Description¶
The wildfire data used in this analysis comes from the USDA's wildfire occurance data for the United States, 1992-2020. This is the fifth version of the dataset and was generated from reporting systems of federal, state, and local fire organizations. Wildfire occurences are reported from 1992-2020 and include 2.3 million wildfire records.
Data Citation: Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6
These plots show both the largest fires on record and the total number of fires per year in each of the officially recognized Native American and Indigenous Region within the United States and its territories. Regions can be interactively selected to toggle between regions.¶
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