What Rules Govern Use of Our Mapping Data and Tools?
The terms below explain what you can do with the maps, datasets, and tools published here, and the limits that apply when you use them.
Last updated: 12 June 2024
Acceptance of Terms
When you open this site, browse a map layer, or download one of our datasets, you accept the terms on this page. That applies whether you arrived through a search result, a shared link, or a research reference — every visitor is covered the moment they start using the site.
If any part of these terms doesn't work for you, the answer is simple: don't use the site. We'd rather you walk away than rely on data under conditions you haven't agreed to.
Acceptable Use
Most of what we ask is common sense, but it helps to spell it out.
If you submit anything — a correction to a wildfire boundary, a comment, a contact form, it needs to be accurate and offered in good faith. Fabricated reports waste reviewer time and can quietly corrupt a dataset that other people depend on.
- Don't probe, scrape aggressively, or otherwise interfere with the site's security or availability.
- Don't use the tools for anything unlawful, harassing, or abusive.
- Don't misrepresent who you are when you contribute information.
Automated access at a reasonable rate is fine for research. Hammering the servers until they degrade for everyone else is not.
Use License
You may view, download, and use site content for personal, non-commercial purposes. Read a climate-impact layer, pull a subsistence-access map into your own study notes, teach a class with it — all welcome.
What you can't do is republish or redistribute that content as your own product, or fold it into a commercial service, without written permission first. The intellectual property in the maps, code, and written material stays with this project or the partners who licensed it to us. A license to use is not a transfer of ownership.
If your intended use sits in the grey zone between personal and commercial — a nonprofit report, a grant-funded tool, ask. We answer those questions often, and a short email usually settles it.
No Warranties
This is where mapping data deserves special honesty. Our layers come from satellite feeds, field surveys, and community submissions, and we publish them on an "as available" basis. We work hard on accuracy, but we don't guarantee that any figure, boundary, or timestamp is correct for your specific purpose.
Wildfire perimeters shift by the hour. Access routes change with the season. A map that was right last week can mislead you today. So when a decision carries real consequences — safety, travel, legal, or financial, treat our data as one input among several and seek independent professional guidance.
Plainly put: we make no promise that the site will be uninterrupted, error-free, or fit for any particular use. Verify before you rely.
Limitation of Liability
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for damages that arise from your use of — or inability to use, this site or its data.
That exclusion covers indirect, incidental, and consequential losses: a trip planned around a stale access map, a decision made on an unverified boundary, downtime that interrupted your work. Some jurisdictions limit how far these exclusions can reach, and where that's the case, our liability is capped at the minimum the law permits rather than removed entirely.
Applicable Law
These terms are interpreted under the laws of the jurisdiction in which the project operates. Any dispute that can't be resolved directly falls to the competent local courts there.
If a court finds one clause unenforceable, that clause is trimmed back or set aside and the rest of the terms stay in force. Removing a single sentence doesn't void the agreement.
Modifications to Terms
We revise this page from time to time — when the data sources change, when the law shifts, or when a clause turns out to be unclear in practice. The current revision date sits at the top, so you can always see when it last moved.
Continuing to use the site after an update means you accept the revised terms. We don't email every visitor about small wording changes, so it's worth glancing at the date if you depend on the data regularly.
Contact Information
Questions about anything here — a licensing request, a permission query, a clause you'd like clarified, are welcome. Reach us through the details on our Contact Us page, and the relevant person will get back to you.
For how we handle the information you send us, see the Privacy Policy. To learn who maintains these datasets, the About MapVenture page has the background.