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Burn Severity Maps, or differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) maps, categorize burned areas (soils and vegetation) into 4 levels: high, moderate, low, and unburned. These maps can be used to rapidly assess wildfire impacts across large, inaccessible landscapes, and also to support assessment of immediate impacts to soils, or short- to long-term impacts to vegetation. While their application as an outreach tool for the public has been largely unexplored, burn severity maps can be effective in helping landowners and land managers gain immediate understanding of the potential ecological impacts of wildfire and prioritize allocation of resources for burn recovery. Landsat satellite derived burn severity maps are commonly used in the management of public lands in the western U.S.; however, this is the first effort to validate and use dNBR maps in Texas as part of a cooperative effort with the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS; http://mtbs.gov) project. We collaborated with the USDA Forest Service (USFS) Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC), the US Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center, and the National Park Service (NPS) to produce and field-validate dNBR maps for the Davis Mountains, Texas, with the objective of providing a planning tool for recovery after the wildfires of 2011 and 2012. In comparison to other studies, our results demonstrated a relatively high level of agreement between dNBR maps and ground level measurements when we used combined plot values for Years 2011 and 2012 (R2 = 0.82). However, the application of dNBR maps has not been sufficiently explored for all biophysical settings, including grassland communities. The usefulness of burn severity maps for rapid assessment has strong potential as an outreach tool for landowners and communities, and for long-term monitoring of soil and vegetation recovery and response to different levels of burn severity. When combined with other geospatial data such as digital elevation models, soil surveys, and land-use maps, dNBR could be a valuable tool for prioritizing post-fire natural resource restoration efforts. As a result of these implications, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service will be incorporating burn severity maps as an outreach tool to private landowners, and evaluating their use to monitor long-term recovery and planning.