7th Workshop on Forest Fire Management - EARSeL, European ...

Burn severity and burning efficiency estimation using simulation models and geoCBI 223
ature-based BE values per vegetation type found in the pre-fire scenario
(table 1). Vegetation types were extracted from a Californian vegetation
map and grouped in four main classes: grass, shrubs, conifers and hardwoods.
The percentage of burned biomass, extracted from a pre- and a postfire
Landsat TM images in terms of differences in pre-and post- NDVI, was
correlated against literature BE (BEref, commonly used for fire emission
estimation, table 2) and also against the adjusted BE (BEadj, using BS), in
order to compare both efficiency estimations.
BS
GRASS
BEadj PER VEGETATION TYPE (CWHR)
SHRUB CONIFER HARDWOOD
LOW 0.83 0.71 0.25 0.25
MODERATE 0.90 0.84 0.47 0.40
HIGH 0.98 0.95 0.65 0.56
Table 1 - Adjusted burning efficiency values (BEadj) using the burn severity (BS) information.
VEGETATION TYPE BEref REFERENCES
GRASS 0.98
SHRUB 0.95
CONIFER 0.48
HARDWOOD 0.45
2006 IPCC Guidelines for
National Greenhouse Gas
Inventories
Table 2 - BE values extracted from the literature (BEref) and used in the validation process.
3 - Results
dNDVI
BE INDEX
BEref
BEadj
GRASS SHRUB CONIFER
y=-7E-16x + 0.98
R2 = _ _ _
y = 0.58x + 0.71
R2 = 0.69
y = -4E-15x + 0.95
R 2