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Author(s):
Carmen Quintano, Alfonso Fernández-Manso, Dar A. Roberts
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire Effects
Mapping

NRFSN number: 21929
FRAMES RCS number: 23142
Record updated:

Forest fires are incidents of great importance in Mediterranean environments. Landsat data have proven to be suitable for evaluating post-fire vegetation damage and determining different levels of burn severity, which is crucial for planning post-fire rehabilitation. This study assessed the utility of combined Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis (MESMA) fraction images and Land Surface Temperature (LST) to accurately map burn severity. We studied a large convection-dominated wildfire, which occurred on 19-21 September 2012 in Spain, in a zone dominated by Pinus pinaster Ait. Burn severity degree (low, moderate, and high) was measured 2-3 months after fire in 111 field plots using the Composite Burn Index (CBI). Four fraction images were generated using MESMA from the reflective bands of a post-fire Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM +) image: 1.-char, 2.-green vegetation (GV), 3.-non-photosynthetic vegetation and soil (NPVS) and 4.-shade. The thermal band was converted to LST using a single channel algorithm. Next, Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) was used to obtain the probability of each burn severity level from MESMA fraction images and LST. Finally, a burn severity map was generated from the probability images and independently validated using an error matrix, producer and user accuracies per class, and κ statistic. MLR identified the char fraction image and LST as the only significant explanatory variables when burn severity acted as the response variable. Two burn severity degrees (low-moderate and high) were finally considered to build the final burn severity map. In this way, we reached a higher accuracy (κ = 0.79) than using the original three burn severity levels (κ = 0.66). Our study demonstrates the validity of combining fraction images and LST from Landsat data to map burn severity accurately in Mediterranean countries.

Citation

Quintano, Carmen; Fernandez-Manso, Alfonso; Roberts, Dar A. 2017. Burn severity mapping from Landsat MESMA fraction images and land surface temperature. Remote Sensing of Environment 190:83-95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2016.12.009

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