Monitoring post-wildfire vegetation response with remotely sensed time-series data in Spain, USA and Israel
Willem J. D. van Leeuwen A B H , Grant M. Casady A , Daniel G. Neary C , Susana Bautista D , José Antonio Alloza E , Yohay Carmel F , Lea Wittenberg G , Dan Malkinson G and Barron J. Orr AA School of Natural Resources and the Environment, Office of Arid Lands Studies, 1955 E 6th Street, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
B School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
C USDA Rocky Mountain Research Station, 2500 South Pine Knoll Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, USA.
D Departamento de Ecología, Apartado 99, Universidad de Alicante, E-03080 Alicante, Spain.
E Fundación Centro de Estudios Ambientales del Mediterráneo, Charles Darwin, 14, E-46980 Paterna, Spain.
F Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel.
G Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel.
H Corresponding author. Email: leeuw@ag.arizona.edu
International Journal of Wildland Fire 19(1) 75-93 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF08078
Submitted: 20 May 2008 Accepted: 22 June 2009 Published: 5 February 2010
Abstract
Due to the challenges faced by resource managers in maintaining post-fire ecosystem health, there is a need for methods to assess the ecological consequences of disturbances. This research examines an approach for assessing changes in post-fire vegetation dynamics for sites in Spain, Israel and the USA that burned in 1998, 1999 and 2002 respectively. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer satellite Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series data (2000–07) are used for all sites to characterise and track the seasonal and spatial changes in vegetation response. Post-fire trends and metrics for burned areas are evaluated and compared with unburned reference sites to account for the influence of local environmental conditions. Time-series data interpretation provides insights into climatic influences on the post-fire vegetation. Although only two sites show increases in post-fire vegetation, all sites show declines in heterogeneity across the site. The evaluation of land surface phenological metrics, including the start and end of the season, the base and peak NDVI, and the integrated seasonal NDVI, show promising results, indicating trends in some measures of post-fire phenology. Results indicate that this monitoring approach, based on readily available satellite-based time-series vegetation data, provides a valuable tool for assessing post-fire vegetation response.
Additional keywords: drylands, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, phenology, remote sensing, time series, vegetation recovery.
Acknowledgements
MODIS data are distributed by the Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, located at the USA Geological Survey Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (http://LPDAAC.usgs.gov). The USDA Forest Service, Pacific South-west Research Station and the Prescott National Forest contributed site and GIS data. We thank Rosario López-Poma, Joan Llovet and Ángeles G. Mayor for their useful contributions to the field survey at the Guadalest site. We thank Dr Stuart E. Marsh for his constructive feedback and facilitating part of this research through the Arizona Remote Sensing Center. The input provided by three anonymous reviewers is very much appreciated and greatly contributed to this paper. This research was supported by a grant from the International Arid Lands Consortium (04R-02).
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