Monitoring the Effects of Forest Restoration Treatments on Post-Fire Vegetation Recovery with MODIS Multitemporal Data
Open Access
- 24 March 2008
- Vol. 8 (3), 2017-2042
- https://doi.org/10.3390/s8032017
Abstract
This study examines how satellite based time-series vegetation greenness data and phenological measurements can be used to monitor and quantify vegetation recovery after wildfire disturbances and examine how pre-fire fuel reduction restoration treatments impact fire severity and impact vegetation recovery trajectories. Pairs of wildfire affected sites and a nearby unburned reference site were chosen to measure the post-disturbance recovery in relation to climate variation. All site pairs were chosen in forested uplands in Arizona and were restricted to the area of the Rodeo-Chediski fire that occurred in 2002. Fuel reduction treatments were performed in 1999 and 2001. The inter-annual and seasonal vegetation dynamics before, during, and after wildfire events can be monitored using a time series of biweekly composited MODIS NDVI (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) data. Time series analysis methods included difference metrics, smoothing filters, and fitting functions that were applied to extract seasonal and inter-annual change and phenological metrics from the NDVI time series data from 2000 to 2007. Pre- and post-fire Landsat data were used to compute the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) and examine burn severity at the selected sites. The phenological metrics (pheno-metrics) included the timing and greenness (i.e. NDVI) for the start, peak and end of the growing season as well as proxy measures for the rate of green-up and senescence and the annual vegetation productivity. Pre-fire fuel reduction treatments resulted in lower fire severity, which reduced annual productivity much less than untreated areas within the Rodeo-Chediski fire perimeter. The seasonal metrics were shown to be useful for estimating the rate of post-fire disturbance recovery and the timing of phenological greenness phases. The use of satellite time series NDVI data and derived pheno-metrics show potential for tracking vegetation cover dynamics and successional changes in response to drought, wildfire disturbances, and forest restoration treatments in fire-suppressed forests.This publication has 37 references indexed in Scilit:
- Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire ActivityScience, 2006
- Using satellite time-series data sets to analyze fire disturbance and forest recovery across CanadaRemote Sensing of Environment, 2006
- Stand- and landscape-level effects of prescribed burning on two Arizona wildfiresCanadian Journal of Forest Research, 2005
- Evaluating vegetation recovery following large-scale forest fires in Borneo and northeastern China using multi-temporal NOAA/AVHRR imagesJournal of Forest Research, 2005
- Vegetation recovery monitoring and assessment at landslides caused by earthquake in Central TaiwanForest Ecology and Management, 2005
- Higher northern latitude normalized difference vegetation index and growing season trends from 1982 to 1999International Journal of Biometeorology, 2001
- Increased plant growth in the northern high latitudes from 1981 to 1991Nature, 1997
- Satellite remote sensing of primary productionInternational Journal of Remote Sensing, 1986
- North American vegetation patterns observed with the NOAA-7 advanced very high resolution radiometerPlant Ecology, 1985
- Red and photographic infrared linear combinations for monitoring vegetationRemote Sensing of Environment, 1979