Geospatial & Mapping

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) annually maintains and distributes an historical wildland 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, California State Parks, 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 data should be used carefully for statistical analysis and reporting due to missing perimeters (see Use Limitation in metadata). Some fires are missing because historical records were lost or damaged, were too small for the minimum cutoffs, had inadequate documentation or have not yet been incorporated into the database. Other errors with the fire perimeter database include duplicate fires and over-generalization. Additionally, over-generalization, particularly with large old fires, may show unburned "islands" within the final perimeter as burned. Users of the fire perimeter database must exercise caution in application of the data. Careful use of the fire perimeter database will prevent users from drawing inaccurate or erroneous conclusions from the data. This data is updated annually in the spring with fire perimeters from the previous fire season. This dataset may differ in California compared to that available from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) due to different requirements between the two datasets. The data covers fires back to 1878.  As of May 2026, it represents firep25_1. 

Please help improve this dataset by filling out this survey with feedback:

Historical Fire Perimeter Dataset Feedback

Current criteria for data collection are as follows:

CAL FIRE (including contract counties) submit perimeters ≥10 acres in timber, ≥50 acres in brush, or ≥300 acres in grass, and/or ≥3 impacted residential or commercial structures, and/or caused ≥1 fatality.

All cooperating agencies submit perimeters ≥10 acres.

 Version update:

Firep25_1 was released in April 2026. Five hundred sixteen fires from the 2025 fire season were added to the database (42 from BLM, 264 from CAL FIRE, 65 from Contract Counties, 62 from Local Responsibility Area, 7 from NPS, 68 from USFS and 7 from USFW). Eleven fires were added from 2016–2024, not previously published. One duplicate record was removed (1984 HURRICANE). One perimeter was identified as a controlled burn and moved to the rxburn25_1 dataset (1987 PEPPERTREE CONTROLLED). Five perimeters were replaced with more accurate geometry. A count of 12,097 fires' collection methods were edited from Null values to Unknown. Another 78 records had attributes updated.

A new field, Global ID, was added to provide a unique ID to track all fire records in this dataset including those pre-dating IRWIN IDs.

The following fires were identified as meeting our collection criteria but are not included in this version and will hopefully be added in a future update: Tule (2025-CATIA-000654).

Includes separate layers filtered by criteria as follows:

California Fire Perimeters (All): Unfiltered. The entire collection of wildfire perimeters in the database.  It is scale dependent and starts displaying at the country level scale. 

Recent Large Fire Perimeters (≥5000 acres): Filtered for wildfires greater or equal to 5,000 acres for the last 5 years of fires (2021–2025), symbolized with color by year and is scale dependent and starts displaying at the country level scale. Year-only labels for recent large fires.

California Fire Perimeters (1950+):  Filtered for wildfires that started in 1950–2025.  Symbolized by decade, and display starting at country level scale.

Detailed metadata is included in the following document:

Wildland Fire Perimeters Metadata

See more information on our Living Atlas data release here:

 CAL FIRE Historical Fire Perimeters Available in ArcGIS Living Atlas

For any questions, please contact the data steward:

Kim Wallin, GIS Specialist

CAL FIRE, Fire & Resource Assessment Program (FRAP)

kimberly.wallin@fire.ca.gov

note:  This feature layer is an ESRI Parquet, currently in Beta.  This format is currently not downloadable, and will need to be manually symbolized by the user. A file geodatabase is available for download here:  GIS Mapping and Data Analytics | CAL FIRE

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Wildland Urban Interface (also known as Edge), Wildland Urban Intermix, and Wildfire Influence Zones. The model uses residential structure density and vegetative cover to define areas within the Fire Hazard Severity Zones. 

Primary Data Inputs:

• Fire Hazard Severity Zones 

• Housing Unit Density 

Secondary Data Inputs:(used to determine vegetation dominance)

• State Wildland Zones 

• Canopy Cover 

Fire Hazard Severity Zones: This source raster dataset represents Fire Management Analysis Zones as adopted officially on April 1, 2024 for State Responsibility Area (SRA) and as distributed to local governments in February and March of 2025 for Local Responsibility Areas (LRA). The source data for the LRA release also contains FHSZ coverage for Federal Responsibility Areas, but these data are used to fill out the state for assessment purposes only. Data sources: FHSZALL_v25_1 (SRA Approved and LRA Recommended) Statewide_v17_4 (Federal Responsibility Areas)

Housing unit density classes for California derived from 30-m rasters extracted from Wildfire Risk to Communities: Spatial datasets of wildfire risk for populated areas in the United States and reprojected to California Teale Albers NAD87. 

DEN4 Description

1: Less than 1 Housing Unit per 20 acres 

2: 1 Housing Unit per 20 acres to 1 Housing Unit per 5 acres

3: More than 1 Housing Unit per 5 acres to 1 Housing Unit per acre 

4: More than 1 Housing Unit per acre

After classifying, clusters of DEN4 values less than 80 cells (just under 18 acres) were nibbled to the nearest adjacent DEN4 class.

State Wildland Zones and Canopy Cover: State Wildland Zones are used to determine the dominance of vegetation. Areas which would otherwise be classed as Wildland Urban Interface.area reclassed to Intermix if the vegetation cover is 50% or more. These canopy cover data are used in concert with SALO Canopy Cover to determine vegetation dominance in areas both within and outside of the the extent of the wildland zones.

• State Wildland Zones: State wildland zones are determined by the attribute flame class, which was derived as part of fire hazard modeling used in the determination of Fire Hazard Severity Zones and represent areas where wildland fire behavior can be assessed using common fire behavior tools. It is derived from fuel model attributes slope, and local fire weather conditions as processed through the NEXUS Fire Behavior platform, and reflects flame front characterization of intensity (flame length) that was then aggregated to fire environment polygons, averaged across the polygon area, and finally classified nominally according to quantile distributions with some threshold adjustments to reflect realistic class breaks for marginal areas of widely accepted hazard levels. All wildland zones are 50% or more vegetated.

• Canopy Cover: The horizontal cover fraction occupied by tree canopies. 2020 SALO Canopy cover data was downloaded for all California counties from here: https://forestobservatory.com/ on 5/17/2022 and mosaiced into one statewide dataset, reprojected from UTM 10 to Teale Albers NAD83 and resampled to 30m. 

Note: Vegetation dominance is determined as either FHSZ Wildland Zone 1-3 or SALO > 50% cover. A 3X3 cell circular focal mean is applied and areas with 0.5 or greater are considered at least 50% vegetated.

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These data are analyzed according to the following parameters:

Interface:

• DEN4 Class 3 or 4 

• In Moderate, High, or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone

• Less than 50% vegetation cover

• Spatially contiguous groups of 30m cells that are approximately 20 acres in size or larger

Intermix:

• DEN4 Class 2 or 3

• In Moderate, High or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone

• Reclassed Interface:

• Interface cell groups less than 20 acres

• Interface that is 50% or more vegetated and in spatially contiguous groups of 30m cells that are at least 20 acres in size 

• Intermix is spatially contiguous groups of 30m cells approximately 100 acres in size or larger 

Interface and Intermix are then combined. After combining, any cell group with fewer than 80 cells is classed to the value of its neighbor.

Influence Zone:

• Up to 1.5 miles from Interface or Intermix

• In Moderate, High, or Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone

• Not Interface or Intermix

Interface, Intermix and Influence Zones are then combined. After combining, any cell group with fewer than 80 cells is classed to the value of its neighbor.

A final step in the model addressed an inadvertent error invoked by the processing of potential interface conversion to Intermix for small fragments (<20 acres of Interface) and larger areas of Interface that were covered by a majority (>50%) vegetation within the areas otherwise defined as Interface because of meeting housing unit density and hazard requirements. When these lands were then subject to the final size minimum of 100 acres they then reverted to being potential buffer areas. This was remedied by selecting all lands that met the criteria of DEN4 values 3 and 4 (i.e.,all areas with housing density greater than 1 HU/ac) and reverting them to Interface designation. These previously eliminated but now reverted Intermix areas did not meet the 100 acre requirement and did not produce additional buffer zone influence areas from them. In most cases they are sufficiently embedded within Influence Zone buffers to be consistent with map objectives describing the land in terms of exposure and opportunity for community protection and risk mitigation.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) annually maintains and distributes an historical wildland 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, California State Parks, 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 data should be used carefully for statistical analysis and reporting due to missing perimeters (see Use Limitation in metadata). Some fires are missing because historical records were lost or damaged, were too small for the minimum cutoffs, had inadequate documentation or have not yet been incorporated into the database. Other errors with the fire perimeter database include duplicate fires and over-generalization. Additionally, over-generalization, particularly with large old fires, may show unburned "islands" within the final perimeter as burned. Users of the fire perimeter database must exercise caution in application of the data. Careful use of the fire perimeter database will prevent users from drawing inaccurate or erroneous conclusions from the data. This data is updated annually in the spring with fire perimeters from the previous fire season. This dataset may differ in California compared to that available from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) due to different requirements between the two datasets. The data covers fires back to 1878.  As of May 2026, it represents firep25_1. 

Please help improve this dataset by filling out this survey with feedback:

Historical Fire Perimeter Dataset Feedback

Current criteria for data collection are as follows:

CAL FIRE (including contract counties) submit perimeters ≥10 acres in timber, ≥50 acres in brush, or ≥300 acres in grass, and/or ≥3 impacted residential or commercial structures, and/or caused ≥1 fatality.

All cooperating agencies submit perimeters ≥10 acres.

 Version update:

Firep25_1 was released in April 2026. Five hundred sixteen fires from the 2025 fire season were added to the database (42 from BLM, 264 from CAL FIRE, 65 from Contract Counties, 62 from Local Responsibility Area, 7 from NPS, 68 from USFS and 7 from USFW). Eleven fires were added from 2016–2024, not previously published. One duplicate record was removed (1984 HURRICANE). One perimeter was identified as a controlled burn and moved to the rxburn25_1 dataset (1987 PEPPERTREE CONTROLLED). Five perimeters were replaced with more accurate geometry. A count of 12,097 fires' collection methods were edited from Null values to Unknown. Another 78 records had attributes updated.

A new field, Global ID, was added to provide a unique ID to track all fire records in this dataset including those pre-dating IRWIN IDs.

The following fires were identified as meeting our collection criteria but are not included in this version and will hopefully be added in a future update: Tule (2025-CATIA-000654).

Includes separate layers filtered by criteria as follows:

California Fire Perimeters (All): Unfiltered. The entire collection of wildfire perimeters in the database.  It is scale dependent and starts displaying at the country level scale. 

Recent Large Fire Perimeters (≥5000 acres): Filtered for wildfires greater or equal to 5,000 acres for the last 5 years of fires (2021–2025), symbolized with color by year and is scale dependent and starts displaying at the country level scale. Year-only labels for recent large fires.

California Fire Perimeters (1950+):  Filtered for wildfires that started in 1950–2025.  Symbolized by decade, and display starting at country level scale.

Detailed metadata is included in the following document:

Wildland Fire Perimeters Metadata

See more information on our Living Atlas data release here:

 CAL FIRE Historical Fire Perimeters Available in ArcGIS Living Atlas

For any questions, please contact the data steward:

Kim Wallin, GIS Specialist

CAL FIRE, Fire & Resource Assessment Program (FRAP)

kimberly.wallin@fire.ca.gov