Regular readers of Wildfire Today know that I like to present statistics, charts, and graphs about wildland fire size and occurrence. The first article on Wildfire Today on this topic was in January 19, 2008, and the last time was December 10, 2010. The final numbers for the 2010 calendar year for the United States are available, and I found a new source for crunching data, Many Eyes. So, there’s a new
excuse reason for writing another article.
One statistic I concentrate on is the average size of fires, not so much the number of fires or the total acres burned each year, two stats that the mainstream media harps on. The average size is affected not only by the weather, but also by the fuel condition and age, how many fires were burning at the same time, the short-term availability of firefighting resources, the skill and efficiency of the firefighting effort, strategy used on fires, and the number of firefighting resources on the payroll of the firefighting agencies.
Here are a few new ways of visualizing the average size of wildland fires, in acres, in the United States, from 1960 through 2010. The data for the number of fires and acres burned each year came from NIFC. Then I spent some time with Excel and Many Eyes to develop these products.
And the standard stack graph:
The average fire size in 2010 was 48 acres, compared to the average between 1960 and 2010 which was 37.
The chart below shows the average size of wildfires in the United States by decade.