Black Hills Region South Dakota 2017 Legion Lake Fire Burned and Unburned Plot Measurements

U.S Geological Survey (USGS) scientists conducted field data collection efforts during the time periods of September 5 - 14, 2018, November 8 - 13, 2018, June 18 - 27, 2019, July 30 - August 8, 2019, September 13 - 19, 2019, and June 23 - July 1, 2020. These efforts used a combination of technologies to map twenty burned and twelve unburned forest plots at eleven sites in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Twelve burned plots at five sites and nine unburned plots at two sites are located within Custer State Park, five burned plots are located on private land adjacent to Custer State Park at two sites, three unburned plots are located at one site near Hazelrodt Picnic Area in the Black Hills National Forest, and three burned plots are located at one site in Wind Cave National Park. The plots are 15 m in radius and burned plot centers are located at least 100 m apart. The work was initiated following the 2017 Legion Lake Fire as an effort to gain a better understanding of how much vegetation is actually consumed from tree canopies during wildland fires. The USGS team collected Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), total station, and ground based lidar (GBL) data, along with collecting some more traditional forestry measurements like tree diameter at breast height (DBH). This data release contains shapefiles of the processed GNSS and total station data, point clouds in the lidar data exchange (las) file format from the ground lidar data, and spreadsheets in the comma separated values (csv) format for the more traditional measurements.