Short-Term Effects of Fire Severity on Vegetation Based on Sentinel-2 Satellite Data

Aru Han, Qing Song, Yongbin Bao, Li Na, Yuhai Bao, Xingpeng Liu, Jiquan Zhang and Chunyi Wang
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Aru Han: School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Yongbin Bao: School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Li Na: School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Yuhai Bao: College of Geographical Science, Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot 010022, China
Xingpeng Liu: School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Jiquan Zhang: School of Environment, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, China
Chunyi Wang: Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing 100081, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: An important component in improving the quality of forests is to study the interference intensity of forest fires, in order to describe the intensity of the forest fire and the vegetation recovery, and to improve the monitoring ability of the dynamic change of the forest. Using a forest fire event in Bilahe, Inner Monglia in 2017 as a case study, this study extracted the burned area based on the BAIS2 index of Sentinel-2 data for 2016–2018. The leaf area index (LAI) and fractional vegetation cover (FVC), which are more suitable for monitoring vegetation dynamic changes of a burned area, were calculated by comparing the biophysical and spectral indices. The results showed that patterns of change of LAI and FVC of various land cover types were similar post-fire. The LAI and FVC of forest and grassland were high during the pre-fire and post-fire years. During the fire year, from the fire month (May) through the next 4 months (September), the order of areas of different fire severity in terms of values of LAI and FVC was: low > moderate > high severity. During the post fire year, LAI and FVC increased rapidly in areas of different fire severity, and the ranking of areas of different fire severity in terms of values LAI and FVC was consistent with the trend observed during the pre-fire year. The results of this study can improve the understanding of the mechanisms involved in post-fire vegetation change. By using quantitative inversion, the health trajectory of the ecosystem can be rapidly determined, and therefore this method can play an irreplaceable role in the realization of sustainable development in the study area. Therefore, it is of great scientific significance to quantitatively retrieve vegetation variables by remote sensing.

Keywords: Sentinel-2A; BAIS2; fire severity; vegetation biophysical variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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