An Object-Based Approach for Fire History Reconstruction by Using Three Generations of Landsat Sensors

Thomas Katagis,George Mitri,Ioannis Gitas

doi:10.3390/rs6065480

Thomas Katagis, George Mitri + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs6065480

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Abstract

In this study, the capability of geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) in the reconstruction of the recent fire history of a typical Mediterranean area was investigated. More specifically, a semi-automated GEOBIA procedure was developed and tested on archived and newly acquired Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) images in order to accurately map burned areas in the Mediterranean island of Thasos. The developed GEOBIA ruleset was built with the use of the TM image and then applied to the other two images. This process of transferring the ruleset did not require substantial adjustments or any replacement of the initially selected features used for the classification, thus, displaying reduced complexity in processing the images. As a result, burned area maps of very high accuracy (over 94% overall) were produced. In addition to the standard error matrix, the employment of additional measures of agreement between the produced maps and the reference data revealed that “spatial misplacement” was the main source of classification error. It can be concluded that the proposed approach can be potentially used for reconstructing the recent (40-year) fire history in the Mediterranean, based on extended time series of Landsat or similar data.

Highlights

Forest fires are considered to be one of the major factors affecting vegetation succession, and nutrient and global carbon cycles [1,2]
Regarding the effectiveness of the model when applied to the Thematic Mapper (TM) and Operational Land Imager (OLI) images, high overall accuracies were achieved for the fires of 1984 and 2013
The main conclusion drawn from this work is that the developed object-based approach is capable of producing burned area maps of very high accuracy independently of the type of Landsat image employed, and, has the potential to be used for the recent (40-year) fire history reconstruction of an area at the local/regional/national level

Summary

Introduction

Forest fires are considered to be one of the major factors affecting vegetation succession, and nutrient and global carbon cycles [1,2]. Fire regimes have been mainly influenced by human activities and practices [7], more recently, climatic and environmental changes are considered as driving factors affecting fire occurrence and vegetation succession [8,9]. These constantly evolving interactions and effects of fire in space and time constitute what is referred in the literature as fire history [10]. Accurate reconstruction of fire history is related, among others, to the following: investigation and monitoring of the long-term post-fire vegetation succession [12], understanding of the causes of fire ignition [13], investigation of the interactions between climate change and fire occurrence [11], preservation and management of biodiversity [14], and determination of pre-fire planning and other fire management related policies [15]

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