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International Journal of Wildland Fire International Journal of Wildland Fire Society
Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

An accuracy assessment of the MTBS burned area product for shrub–steppe fires in the northern Great Basin, United States

Aaron M. Sparks A , Luigi Boschetti A , Alistair M. S. Smith A B , Wade T. Tinkham A , Karen O. Lannom A and Beth A. Newingham A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-1133, USA.

B Corresponding author. Email: alistair@uidaho.edu

International Journal of Wildland Fire 24(1) 70-78 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF14131
Submitted: 25 July 2014  Accepted: 28 August 2014   Published: 26 November 2014

Abstract

Although fire is a common disturbance in shrub–steppe, few studies have specifically tested burned area mapping accuracy in these semiarid to arid environments. We conducted a preliminary assessment of the accuracy of the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) burned area product on four shrub–steppe fires that exhibited varying degrees of within-fire patch heterogeneity. Independent burned area perimeters were derived through visual interpretation and were used to cross-compare the MTBS burned area perimeters with classifications produced using set thresholds on the Relativised differenced Normalised Burn Index (RdNBR), Mid-infrared Burn Index (MIRBI) and Char Soil Index (CSI). Overall, CSI provided the most consistent accuracies (96.3–98.6%), with only small commission errors (1.5–4.4%). MIRBI also had relatively high accuracies (92.2–97.9%) and small commission errors (2.1–10.8%). The MTBS burned area product had higher commission errors (4.3–15.5%), primarily due to inclusion of unburned islands and fingers within the fire perimeter. The RdNBR burned area maps exhibited lower accuracies (92.9–96.0%). However, the different indices when constrained by the MTBS perimeter provided variable results, with CSI providing the highest and least variable accuracies (97.4–99.1%). Studies seeking to use MTBS perimeters to analyse trends in burned area should apply spectral indices to constrain the final burned area maps. The present paper replaces a former paper of the same title (http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF13206), which was withdrawn owing to errors discovered in data analysis after the paper was accepted for publication.

Additional keywords: CSI, dNBR, MIRBI, RdNBR, remote sensing.


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