Comparative study of vegetation indices to assess land cover change after forest fires

Teresa G. Santos; Mario R. Caetano; Paulo M. Barbosa; Jose U. Paul

doi:10.1117/12.373108

17 December 1999 Comparative study of vegetation indices to assess land cover change after forest fires

Teresa G. Santos, Mario R. Caetano, Paulo M. Barbosa, Jose U. Paul

Proceedings Volume 3868, Remote Sensing for Earth Science, Ocean, and Sea Ice Applications; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373108
Event: Remote Sensing, 1999, Florence, Italy

Abstract

Forest fires are a major problem in Portugal, consuming thousands of hectares per year. A great number of fires are due to arson, which most of the times is related to land use change purposes. Different Government Agencies are responsible for checking if the forest owners are in compliance with the legislation that regulates land use change after fire occurrence. Earth observation data can play a very important role in monitoring land cover transitions occurring in burnt forest areas. An exploratory analysis of a Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) multi-temporal dataset was carried out to see if pre-defined land cover transitions, within a burnt forest area, could be separated and identified. Three vegetation indices (VI) were used for this propose: NDVI, MSAVI and ARVI. The capabilities of these VI were evaluated on test areas that had pine forest before the fire, followed by a transition into eucalyptus planted in the first or second year after fire or shrub land. The three VI were ranked, in terms of separability, between these three types of transition. ARVI was found to be the one that discriminated better between the two eucalyptus transitions and shrub land.

Citation Download Citation

Teresa G. Santos, Mario R. Caetano, Paulo M. Barbosa, and Jose U. Paul "Comparative study of vegetation indices to assess land cover change after forest fires", Proc. SPIE 3868, Remote Sensing for Earth Science, Ocean, and Sea Ice Applications, (17 December 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.373108

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