Abstract
Wildland fires are a yearly recurring phenomenon in many terrestrial ecosystems. Accurate fire severity estimates are of paramount importance for modeling fire-induced trace gas emissions and rehabilitating post-fire landscapes. We used high spatial and high spectral resolution MODIS/ASTER (MASTER) airborne simulator data acquired over four 2007 southern California burns to evaluate the effectiveness of 19 different spectral indices, including the widely used Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), for assessing fire severity in southern California chaparral. Ordinal logistic regression was used to assess the goodness-of-fit between the spectral index values and ordinal field data of severity. The NBR and three indices in which the NBR is enhanced with surface temperature or emissivity data revealed the best performance. Our findings support the operational use of the NBR in chaparral ecosystems by Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) projects, and demonstrate the potential of combining optical and thermal data for assessing fire severity. Additional testing in more burns, other ecoregions and different vegetation types is required to fully understand how (thermally enhanced) spectral indices relate to fire severity.
Highlights
Fire regimes are characterized by their spatial pattern, frequency, intensity, seasonality, size distribution and severity [1]
This study aims to evaluate the performance of existing vegetation indices and thermally enhanced indices for assessing fire severity in chaparral ecosystems
Similar performance was observed with the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) (D = 64.34), NSEv1 (D = 64.50) and NSEv2 (D = 64.55)
Summary
Fire regimes are characterized by their spatial pattern, frequency, intensity, seasonality, size distribution and severity [1]. This impact can be described as: (i) the amount of damage [3,4,5]; (ii) the physical, chemical and biological changes [6,7,8,9,10]; or (iii) the degree of alteration [11,12] that fire causes to an ecosystem In this context, the terms fire severity and burn severity are often used interchangeably [2], Lentile et al [13] and Veraverbeke et al [14], suggest a clear distinction between both terms by considering the fire disturbance continuum [15], which addresses three different temporal fire effects phases: before, during and after the fire. These important objectives strengthen the need for a better understanding of fire/burn severity as an integral component in ecosystem functioning
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