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Indicators of burn severity at extended temporal scales: a decade of ecosystem response in mixed-conifer forests of western Montana
Lewis Sarah A., Hudak Andrew T., Robichaud Peter R., Morgan Penelope, Satterberg Kevin L., Strand Eva K., Smith Alistair M. S., Zamudio Joseph A., Lentile Leigh B. (2017)
Indicators of burn severity at extended temporal scales: a decade of ecosystem response in mixed-conifer forests of western Montana. International Journal of Wildland Fire 26, 755-771.
Keywords: char, hyperspectral remote sensing, multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis, QuickBird
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Abstract:
We collected field and remotely sensed data spanning 10 years after three 2003 Montana wildfires to monitor
ecological change across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis was used to
create post-fire maps of: char, soil, green (GV) and non-photosynthetic (NPV) vegetation from high-resolution 2003
hyperspectral (HS) and 2007 QuickBird (QB) imagery, and from Landsat 5 and 8 imagery collected on anniversary dates in
2002, 2003 (post fire), 2004, 2007 and 2013. Initial estimates of char and NPV from the HS images were significantly
correlated with their ground-measured counterparts (r ¼ 0.60 (P ¼ 0.03) and 0.68 (P ¼ 0.01) respectively), whereas HS
GV and Landsat GV were correlated with canopy GV (r ¼ 0.75 and 0.70 (P ¼ 0.003) respectively). HS imagery had
stronger direct correlations with all classes of fine-scale ground data than Landsat and also had stronger predictive
correlations with 10-year canopy data (r¼0.65 (P¼0.02) to 0.84 (P¼0.0003)). There was less than 5% understorey GV
cover on the sites initially, but by 2013, it had increased to nearly 60% regardless of initial condition. The data suggest it
took twice as long for understorey GV and NPV to replace char and soil as primary ground cover components on the highburn-
severity sites compared with other sites.
Moscow FSL publication no. 2017a
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