Fuels Data for the 2000 Jasper Fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Collected in 2023 and 2024

Post-fire vegetation structure and fuel data are needed understand how an area recovers over time. To address this need, data were collected within the perimeter of the 2000 Jasper Fire near Custer, SD, on 73 plots co-located with plots previously established by scientists to assess burn severity. Vegetation structure data were collected at these plots during two periods: July 11–17, 2023, and May 31–June 28, 2024. In 2023, the vegetation and fuel data were collected on 30 m diameter plots. For greater efficiency, the plots were reduced to 20 m diameter for the 2024 data collection. The plots were originally established in 2002 to collect, composite burn index (CBI) data to validate burn severity products derived from Landsat. Plots were located at least 90 meters apart and distanced from roads, ensuring a stratified representation of burn severity. The 2023-2024 field campaign revisited these plots to assess long-term trends in vegetation recovery and fuel status following the Jasper fire (Chen et al., 2011; Picotte et al., 2021; U.S. Geological Survey, 2022). The research team measured and/or recorded a suite of vegetation and fuel metrics at the tree, transect, and plot level. In additional to conventional field measurements, terrestrial lidar data were also collected at each of the plots. This data release includes a shapefile of plot locations, spreadsheets in comma-separated values (CSV) format of the recorded measurements and point clouds in the lidar data exchange (las) file format for the terrestrial lidar data.