Journal article

Fire severity estimation from space: a comparison of active and passive sensors and their synergy for different forest types

MA Tanase, R Kennedy, C Aponte

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WILDLAND FIRE | CSIRO PUBLISHING | Published : 2015

Abstract

Monitoring fire effects at landscape level is viable from remote sensing platforms providing repeatable and consistent measurements. Previous studies have estimated fire severity using optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) sensors, but to our knowledge, none have compared their effectiveness. Our study carried out such a comparison by using change detection indices computed from pre- and post-fire Landsat and L-band space-borne SAR datasets to estimate fire severity for seven fires located on three continents. Such indices were related to field-estimated fire severity through empirical models, and their estimation accuracy was compared. Empirical models based on the joint use of optical..

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Grants

Awarded by University of Melbourne


Funding Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the University of Melbourne through an Early Career Research Grant (ECR 602155). ALOS PALSAR datasets were provided by the Japanese Space Agency within the 4th ALOS Research Announcement (PI 1091). The two anonymous reviewers are also acknowledged for their useful suggestions that significantly improved the original manuscript.