Mapping wildfire burn severity in the arctic tundra from downsampled MODIS data

Wildfires are historically infrequent in the arctic tundra, but are projected to increase with climate warming. Fire effects on tundra ecosystems are poorly understood and difficult to quantify in a remote region where a short growing season severely limits ground data collection. Remote sensing has...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
Main Authors: Kolden, Crystal, Rogan, John
Format: Text
Language:unknown
Published: Clark Digital Commons 2013
Subjects:
arctic environment
data acquisition
fire behavior
growing season
Landsat
mapping
MODIS
regeneration
satellite data
tundra
wildfire
Geography
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Arctic
north slope
Tundra
Alaska
Online Access:https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/654
https://doi.org/10.1657/1938-4246-45.1.64
Description
Summary:Wildfires are historically infrequent in the arctic tundra, but are projected to increase with climate warming. Fire effects on tundra ecosystems are poorly understood and difficult to quantify in a remote region where a short growing season severely limits ground data collection. Remote sensing has been widely utilized to characterize wildfire regimes, but primarily from the Landsat sensor, which has limited data acquisition in the Arctic. Here, coarse-resolution remotely sensed data are assessed as a means to quantify wildfire burn severity of the 2007 Anaktuvuk River Fire in Alaska, the largest tundra wildfire ever recorded on Alaska's North Slope. Data from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and downsampled Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) were processed to spectral indices and correlated to observed metrics of surface, subsurface, and comprehensive burn severity. Spectral indices were strongly correlated to surface severity (maximum R 2 = 0.88) and slightly less strongly correlated to substrate severity. Downsampled MODIS data showed a decrease in severity one year post-fire, corroborating rapid vegetation regeneration observed on the burned site. These results indicate that widely-used spectral indices and downsampled coarse-resolution data provide a reasonable supplement to often-limited ground data collection for analysis and long-term monitoring of wildfire effects in arctic ecosystems.

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