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Using QuickBird Imagery to Detect Cover and Spread of Post-Fire Straw Mulch After the 2006 Tripod Fire, Washington, USA
Lewis, S.A.; Robichaud, P.R. 2011.
Using QuickBird Imagery to Detect Cover and Spread of Post-Fire Straw Mulch After the 2006 Tripod Fire,
Washington, USA.
Fort Collins, CO: United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.
Research Note RMRS-RN-43. April 2011. 12 p.
Keywords: QuickBird, remote sensing, straw mulch, Tripod Fire, Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER), erosion mitigation
Links:
PDF [3.6 MB]
Abstract:
Agricultural straw mulch is a commonly applied treatment for protecting resources
at risk from runoff and erosion events after wildfires. High-resolution QuickBird
satellite imagery was acquired after straw mulch was applied on the 2006 Tripod
Fire in Washington. We tested whether the imagery was suitable for remotely assessing
the areal coverage of the straw mulch treatment.
Straw mulch was easily identified in the imagery because of the distinct spectral
signature of the mulch against the burned background. The measured straw cover on
the ground was correlated to the modeled cover in the imagery with a correlation
coefficient of r = 0.47, and a rank analysis indicated the ability to predict relative
straw cover amounts on the plots with a rank correlation of ρ = 0.40. Better correlations
may be possible if the time between the image acquisition and field validation
was shorter. Our results encourage further exploration of the use of high-resolution
imagery for research applications and postfire management.
Moscow FSL publication no. 2011c
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