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Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Evaluating Landsat Thematic Mapper spectral indices for estimating burn severity of the 2007 Peloponnese wildfires in Greece

Sander Veraverbeke A D , Willem W. Verstraeten B , Stefaan Lhermitte C and Rudi Goossens A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Geography, Ghent University, Krijgslaan 281 S8, BE-9000 Ghent, Belgium.

B Department of Biosystems, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Willem de Croylaan 34, BE-3001 Leuven, Belgium.

C Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Aridas, Universidad de la Serena, Campus A. Bello, La Serena, Chile.

D Corresponding author. Email: sander.veraverbeke@ugent.be

International Journal of Wildland Fire 19(5) 558-569 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF09069
Submitted: 5 July 2009  Accepted: 5 December 2009   Published: 9 August 2010

Abstract

A vast area (more than 100 000 ha) of forest, shrubs and agricultural land burned on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece during the 2007 summer. Three pre- and post-fire differenced Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)-derived spectral indices were correlated with field data of burn severity for these devastating fires. These spectral indices were the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Normalised Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) and the Normalised Burn Ratio (NBR). The field data consist of 160 Geo Composite Burn Index (GeoCBI) plots. In addition, indices were evaluated in terms of optimality. The optimality statistic is a measure for the index’s sensitivity to fire-induced vegetation depletion. Results show that the GeoCBI–dNBR (differenced NBR) approach yields a moderately high R2 = 0.65 whereas the correlation between field data and the differenced NDMI (dNDMI) and the differenced NDVI (dNDVI) was clearly lower (respectively R2 = 0.50 and R2 = 0.46). The dNBR also outperformed the dNDMI and dNDVI in terms of optimality. The resulting median dNBR optimality equalled 0.51 whereas the median dNDMI and dNDVI optimality values were respectively 0.50 and 0.40 (differences significant for P < 0.001). However, inaccuracies observed in the spectral indices approach indicate that there is room for improvement. This could imply improved preprocessing, revised index design or alternative methods.

Additional keywords: fire severity, Geo Composite Burn Index, Normalised Burn Ratio, Normalised Difference Vegetation Index, optimality, spectral index.


Acknowledgements

The study was financed by the Ghent University special research funds (BOF: Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds). The authors thank the reviewers for their constructive remarks.


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