Abstract
Forest fires constitute a natural disturbance factor and an agent of environmental change with local to global impacts on Earth’s processes and functions. Accurate knowledge of forest fuel extent and properties can be an effective component for assessing the impacts of possible future wildfires on ecosystem services. Our study aims to evaluate and compare the spectral and spatial information inherent in the EO-1 Hyperion, Quickbird and Landsat TM imagery. The analysis was based on a support vector machine classification approach in order to discriminate and map Mediterranean fuel types. The fuel classification scheme followed a site-specific fuel model within the study area, which is suitable for fire behavior prediction and spatial simulation. The overall accuracy of the Quickbird-based fuel type mapping was higher than 74% with a quantity disagreement of 9% and an allocation disagreement of 17%. Both classifications from the Hyperion and Landsat TM fuel type maps presented approximately 70% overall accuracy and 16% allocation disagreement. The McNemar’s test indicated that the overall accuracy differences between the three produced fuel type maps were not significant (p < 0.05). Based on both overall and individual higher accuracies obtained with the use of the Quickbird image, this study suggests that the high spatial resolution might be more decisive than the high spectral resolution in Mediterranean fuel type mapping.
Highlights
Forest fires are an integral component of Mediterranean ecosystems since the Miocene
The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) Hyperion and Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) images were registered to the higher resolution Quickbird image which had been previously orthorectified using a rational function model and ground control points (GCPs) identified over existing VHR orthophotographs
Among the two medium spatial resolution datasets, the EO-1 Hyperion classification was slightly better (OA = 70%, khat = 0.65) in predicting the spatial distribution of fuel types in the area, compared to the classification result obtained from the Landsat TM which achieved an accuracy of 69.5% and khat of 0.64 (Table 3)
Summary
Forest fires are an integral component of Mediterranean ecosystems since the Miocene. The second half of the past century presented a major change and regime shift [1]. This change in fire regime observed in recent decades in European Mediterranean [2,3,4] and elsewhere [5,6], is expressed by an increase of the number of fires and surface burnt [4,7,8], leading to more than 400,000 ha annually burnt areas in the EU Mediterranean region [1]. Efficient forest fire management requires an accurate knowledge of fuels at many spatial and temporal scales [9]. Based on knowledge of the spatial extent of the fuels, national authorities and fire managers can design fire prevention, detection, suppression and fire effects assessment strategies [12], such as the use and distribution of available fire-fighting resources, fuel treatment practices, fire towers and water tanks construction, trace gas emissions, and monitoring of vegetation recovery after fire [13]
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