Fires in Australia's forests 2016–21 (2024), Forest area burnt in one or more of the five years, 2016-17 to 2020-21

Abstract Fires in Australia’s Forests 2016-21 (2024) is a continental spatial dataset of the extent and frequency of planned and unplanned fires occurring in forest in the five financial years between July 2016 and June 2021, assembled for the 2024 update of [Indicator 3.1b] for[ Australia's State of the Forests Report]. It was developed from multiple fire area datasets contributed by state and territory government agencies, after consultation with Australia’s Forest Fire Management Group. The fire dataset is then combined with forest cover information sourced from the [Forests of Australia (2023)] dataset, and forest tenure information sourced from the [Tenure of Australia's forests (2023)] dataset. Planned fire: Fire started in accordance with a fire management plan or planned burning program, such as fuel-reduction burning or prescribed burning. Unplanned fire: Fire started naturally (such as by lightning), accidentally, or deliberately (such as by arson), but not in accordance with planned fire management prescriptions. Also called bushfire or wildfire. The dataset was compiled by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) for the National Forest Inventory (NFI), a collaborative partnership between the Australian and state and territory governments. The role of the NFI is to collate, integrate and communicate information on Australia's forests. The NFI applies a national classification to state and territory data to allow seamless integration of these datasets. Multiple independent sources of external data are used to fill data gaps and improve the quality of the final dataset. Forest areas burnt by fire are allocated by the month of the fire to a financial year (July–June inclusive). Where more than one fire event occurs on any one hectare during a financial year, only the first fire is recorded for that area in the financial year. Fires are also classified into two categories, planned and unplanned, based on the fire seasonality and advice from state and territory agencies. The Fires in Australia’s forests 2016–21 (2024) dataset is produced to fulfil requirements of Australia's National Forest Policy Statement and the Regional Forests Agreement Act 2002 (Cwth), and is used by the Australian Government for domestic and international reporting. [Fires in Australia] Currency Date Modified: 30 June 2021 Publication Date: 28 October 2024 Modification Frequency: As needed Data Extent Coordinate Reference: WGS84 / Mercator Auxiliary Sphere Spatial Extent North: -8.2 South: -44.4 East: 157.2 West: 109.2 Source Information Data, Metadata, Maps and Interactive views are available from[ Fires in Australia's Forests 2016-21 (2024)], [Descriptive Metadata PDF]. The data was obtained from Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry - Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). Lineage Statement Documentation on dataset lineage, and attribute data descriptions and lookup tables for the Fires in Australia’s forest 2016–21 (2024) dataset, are available from the [Fires in Australia’s forests] spatial data webpage. Note: The Digital Atlas of Australia downloaded and created a copy of the source data in February 2025 that was suitable to be hosted through ArcGIS Image Dedicated. A copy of the raster dataset was created with RGB fields as a colour map with Geoprocessing tools in ArcGIS Pro, and the raster dataset was re-projected from 1994 Australia Albers to WGS 1984 Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere). This Web Mapping Service is for display purposes only. It is in Web Mercator projection and not suitable for deriving area statistics. For any analyses use the [original dataset] published in Albers projection. Data Dictionary ───────────────┬─────────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Field Name │Data Type │Description ───────────────┼─────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── VALUE │Numeric │Unique identifier for each unique combination of attribute table field values. ───────────────┼─────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── COUNT │Numeric │Number of cells that occur for a particular VALUE. For this dataset the cell size is 100 by 100 metres. The COUNT value is equivalent to the area in hectares. ───────────────┼─────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── BURN OCCURRENCE│String (Text)│Groups forest by number of times burnt: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Forest not burnt. ───────────────┴─────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Contact Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES),[Info.ABARES@aff.gov.au].