Abstract
Satellite images have been used successfully to map fire scars in a variety of ecosystems, but to date there are no documented studies on the application of this technology in the oak‐dominated deciduous forests of the eastern United States. The goal of the current study was to develop an approach suitable for mapping fire scars in eastern Kentucky using a single‐date Landsat ETM+ image. No single spectral band or spectral vegetation index appears successful in mapping fire scars in senesced oak‐dominated hardwood forests. Results obtained in this study suggest that a combination of Landsat spectral bands, particularly ETM+ 3, ETM+ 4, and ETM+ 7, are necessary for separating burned areas from low‐reflectance targets such as water bodies and shadows areas, and other land cover types such as senesced forests, and clear‐cut/strip mine surfaces. Of the techniques evaluated, the unstandardized principal components analysis (UPCA) resulted in the highest overall classification accuracy (85.3%) while KT brightness, greenness, and wetness resulted in the lowest overall fire scar classification accuracy (69.9%).
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