Abstract
Accurate and efficient burned area mapping and monitoring are fundamental for environmental applications. Studies using Landsat time series for burned area mapping are increasing and popular. However, the performance of burned area mapping with different spectral indices and Landsat time series has not been evaluated and compared. This study compares eleven spectral indices for burned area detection in the savanna area of southern Burkina Faso using Landsat data ranging from October 2000 to April 2016. The same reference data are adopted to assess the performance of different spectral indices. The results indicate that Burned Area Index (BAI) is the most accurate index in burned area detection using our method based on harmonic model fitting and breakpoint identification. Among those tested, fire-related indices are more accurate than vegetation indices, and Char Soil Index (CSI) performed worst. Furthermore, we evaluate whether combining several different spectral indices can improve the accuracy of burned area detection. According to the results, only minor improvements in accuracy can be attained in the studied environment, and the performance depended on the number of selected spectral indices.
Highlights
The African savanna frequently experiences extensive fires every year, as thousands of square kilometers are burned, making an important contribution to the total global burned area [1]
Among all the tested indices, Burned Area Index (BAI) achieved the best overall accuracy of 80.35% with a threshold of 2.9, followed by BAIML and BAIMs with thresholds of 2.8 and 3.1, respectively
The main reason is that Normalized Burned Ratio (NBR) is more suitable for burned area detection for a short time after the fire, and its use is limited by the temporal resolution of Landsat data [34]
Summary
The African savanna frequently experiences extensive fires every year, as thousands of square kilometers are burned, making an important contribution to the total global burned area [1]. Timely and accurate mapping of burned areas is essential for fire management, climate modeling, and environmental applications. The rapid development of remote sensing technology provides convenient and effective methods for burned area mapping from regional to global scale. The resolution of these sensors is too coarse to identify small burn patches and their dynamics on a regional scale. The increasing availability of medium spatial resolution satellite images, such as Landsat, is a valuable source of information for more accurate detection of the burned areas at local and regional scales
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