Thousands of scientific articles and reports are published each year on wildland fire, making it difficult for managers, planners, and scientists to find, read, and use the best available science. A team of ecologists reviews this information and publishes syntheses online in the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS), so managers can easily find and better apply science to land management decisions. FEIS offers four peer-reviewed publication types: Species Reviews, Fire Regime Syntheses, Fire Regime Reports, and Fire Studies:
- Species Reviews are syntheses of the published literature covering the biology, ecology, and fire effects on plants and animals in the United States. There are approximately 1,100 Species Reviews in FEIS.
- Fire Regime Syntheses integrate LANDFIRE data with information from the scientific literature to provide in-depth information on historical fire regimes and address contemporary changes in fuels and fire regimes.
- Fire Regime Reports summarize and facilitate access to LANDFIRE data, however they do not include syntheses of the scientific literature. Both Fire Regime Syntheses and Fire Regime Reports connect LANDFIRE data to all of the Species Reviews in FEIS. Through Fire Regime Syntheses and Reports, FEIS contains fire regime information for all of the plant communities in the United States.
- Fire Studies are summaries of one or more fire research projects at a specific location. Fire Studies cover research that provides detailed descriptions of site characteristics, burning conditions, fire behavior, and fire effects. Fire Studies provide information on hundreds of species for which Species Reviews are not available.
All FEIS publications provide a wealth of information for land managers, with applications in fuels and fire management and postfire restoration. FEIS is used by managers in federal land management agencies, states, tribal lands, nongovernment conservation organizations, as well as private land owners, university students and scientists, and the general public.