Satellite monitoring of forest fire impact and regeneration using NDVI and LST

Abstract

Forest fire is a major hazard around the world that seriously affects the terrestrial, aquatic, and atmospheric systems. Remote sensing methods are found to be efficient in mapping forest fires and analyzing the postfire effects through change detection. The land surface temperature (LST) also gets affected with the change of vegetation cover over the region due to the forest fires. This work pertains to analysis of postevent effects of forest fires and regrowth of vegetation using LST and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of 2014, in which many forest fires occurred, and of 2018, to assess the vegetation regrowth in the forest range in and around Tirupati region (Andhra Pradesh, India). The LST was estimated using monowindow algorithm and NDVI by band ratioing method for the Landsat 8 imagery. The Landsat 8 datasets for February and March of 2014 and March of 2018 were used in the study. Analysis using LST and NDVI showed that 112-sq km area was affected by forest fires and detected forest regrowth. A change of 35.8% and 14.69% in mean NDVI and mean temperatures, respectively, was observed for the study area.