burn severity
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2022 ◽  
Vol 269 ◽  
pp. 112800
Author(s):  
Donato Morresi ◽  
Raffaella Marzano ◽  
Emanuele Lingua ◽  
Renzo Motta ◽  
Matteo Garbarino

2022 ◽  
Vol 503 ◽  
pp. 119800
Author(s):  
Cecilia Smith-Ramírez ◽  
Jessica Castillo-Mandujano ◽  
Pablo Becerra ◽  
Nicole Sandoval ◽  
Rodrigo Fuentes ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 5127
Author(s):  
Changming Yin ◽  
Minfeng Xing ◽  
Marta Yebra ◽  
Xiangzhuo Liu

Burn severity is a key component of fire regimes and is critical for quantifying fires’ impacts on key ecological processes. The spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of forest burn severity are closely related to its environmental drivers prior to the fire occurrence. The temperate coniferous forest of northern China is an important part of China’s forest resources and has suffered frequent forest fires in recent years. However, the understanding of environmental drivers controlling burn severity in this fire-prone region is still limited. To fill the gap, spatial pattern metrics including pre-fire fuel variables (tree canopy cover (TCC), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and live fuel moisture content (LFMC)), topographic variables (elevation, slope, and topographic radiation aspect index (TRASP)), and weather variables (relative humidity, maximum air temperature, cumulative precipitation, and maximum wind speed) were correlated with a remote sensing-derived burn severity index, the composite burn index (CBI). A random forest (RF) machine learning algorithm was applied to reveal the relative importance of the environmental drivers mentioned above to burn severity for a fire. The model achieved CBI prediction accuracy with a correlation coefficient (R) equal to 0.76, root mean square error (RMSE) equal to 0.16, and fitting line slope equal to 0.64. The results showed that burn severity was mostly influenced by flammable live fuels and LFMC. The elevation was the most important topographic driver, and meteorological variables had no obvious effect on burn severity. Our findings suggest that in addition to conducting strategic fuel reduction management activities, planning the landscapes with fire-resistant plants with higher LFMC when possible (e.g., “Green firebreaks”) is also indispensable for lowering the burn severity caused by wildfires in the temperate coniferous forests of northern China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 4739
Author(s):  
Marcio D. DaSilva ◽  
David Bruce ◽  
Patrick A. Hesp ◽  
Graziela Miot da Silva

Fires are a disturbance that can lead to short term dune destabilisation and have been suggested to be an initiation mechanism of a transgressive dune phase when paired with changing climatic conditions. Fire severity is one potential factor that could explain subsequent coastal dune destabilisations, but contemporary evidence of destabilisation following fire is lacking. In addition, the suitability of conventional satellite Earth Observation methods to detect the impacts of fire and the relative fire severity in coastal dune environments is in question. Widely applied satellite-derived burn indices (Normalised Burn Index and Normalised Difference Vegetation Index) have been suggested to underestimate the effects of fire in heterogenous landscapes or areas with sparse vegetation cover. This work assesses burn severity from high resolution aerial and Sentinel 2 satellite imagery following the 2019/2020 Black Summer fires on Kangaroo Island in South Australia, to assess the efficacy of commonly used satellite indices, and validate a new method for assessing fire severity in coastal dune systems. The results presented here show that the widely applied burn indices derived from NBR differentially assess vegetation loss and fire severity when compared in discrete soil groups across a landscape that experienced a very high severity fire. A new application of the Tasselled Cap Transformation (TCT) and Disturbance Index (DI) is presented. The differenced Disturbance Index (dDI) improves the estimation of burn severity, relative vegetation loss, and minimises the effects of differing soil conditions in the highly heterogenous landscape of Kangaroo Island. Results suggest that this new application of TCT is better suited to diverse environments like Mediterranean and semi-arid coastal regions than existing indices and can be used to better assess the effects of fire and potential remobilisation of coastal dune systems.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 3237
Author(s):  
Evie Dunstan ◽  
Oliver Funnell ◽  
Jenny McLelland ◽  
Felicity Stoeckeler ◽  
Elisa Nishimoto ◽  
...  

In the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires, Kangaroo Island, South Australia, experienced catastrophic bushfires that burnt approximately half the island, with an estimated 80% of the koala population lost. During and after the event, rescued koalas were triaged at a designated facility and a range of initial data were recorded including rescue location and date, sex, estimation of age, body condition and hydration, and assessment of burn severity (n = 304 records available). Koalas were presented to the triage facility over a span of 10 weeks, with 50.2% during the first 14 days of the bushfire response, the majority of which were rescued from regions of lower fire severity. Burns were observed in 67.4% of koalas, with the majority (60.9%) classified as superficial burns, primarily affecting the limbs and face. Poor body condition was recorded in 74.6% of burnt koalas and dehydration in 77.1%. Negative final outcomes (death or euthanasia, at triage or at a later date) occurred in 45.6% of koalas and were significantly associated with higher mean burn score, maximum burn severity, number of body regions burnt, poor body condition score, and dehydration severity. The findings of this retrospective study may assist clinicians in the field with decision making when triaging koalas in future fire rescue efforts.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria A. Saab ◽  
Quresh R. Latif ◽  
William M. Block ◽  
Jonathan G. Dudley

Abstract Background: Low-severity prescribed fire is a tool used for reducing fuel loads on public lands, particularly in dry conifer forests of the western United States characterized by historically mixed- and low-severity fire regimes. Understanding the ecological effects of prescribed fire treatments is important for predicting the impacts of these management actions on wildlife communities. But few studies have estimated small landbird responses to forest treatments at spatial scales relevant to their ecology or have examined potential differences in treatment effects applied within historically mixed- vs. low-severity fire regimes. Therefore, we evaluated prescribed fire treatment effects and relationships with burn severity for avian communities in dry conifer forests dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) located on seven National Forests in the interior western United States. We surveyed birds for 1–4 years and 1–3 years before and after prescribed fire treatments at mixed- and low-severity fire regime locations, respectively, following a before-after, control-impact study design – 8 paired control-treatment units in mixed-severity locations (16 total study units with 320 survey points) and 4 paired control-treatment units in low-severity locations (8 total study units with 278 survey points). Using a Bayesian hierarchical multi-species occupancy model, we analyzed occupancy patterns for 95 species.Results: We found 33 species with statistically supported treatment effects and/or burn severity relationships primarily in mixed-severity locations. The data supported positive treatment effects at mixed severity locations for 9 species (American Robin [Turdus migratorius], Western Bluebird [Sialia mexicana], Hairy Woodpecker [Dryobates villosus], Black-backed Woodpecker [Picoides arcticus], American Three-toed Woodpecker [Picoides dorsalis], House Wren [Troglodytes aedon], Dusky Flycatcher [Empidonax oberholseri], Western Wood-peewee [Contopus sordidulus], Gray Flycatcher[Empidonax wrightii]), whose occupancy shifted towards more severely burned points after treatment, and a negative effect for one species (Ruby-crowned Kinglet [Corthylio calendula]), whose occupancy shifted away from burned points. At low severity locations, only two species exhibited treatment effects, both negative (Red-faced Warbler [Cardellina rubrifrons], and Lark Sparrow [Chondestes grammacus]). We also found supported occupancy relationships with burn severity post-treatment (i.e., regardless of species distribution before treatment) for 29 species, most of which were consistent with their life histories (e.g., patterns of positive relationships for cavity-nesting, bark insectivores and negative relationships for open-nesting, foliage insectivores). Stronger responses to prescribed fire treatments at mixed-severity locations were unexpected because prescribed fire applications are more similar to historical wildfires characterizing low-severity fire regimes.Conclusions: Bird populations in historically low-severity locations may be relatively unresponsive to prescribed fire because fire there is typically more frequent, expected, and regular. By comparison, fire events are relatively rare historically in mixed severity locations, potentially eliciting more responses to an infrequent opportunity, even by species that are strongly associated with recently burned forests by wildfire. Our results suggest that fire management activities intended to reduce fuels and lower the risk of high-severity wildfire can also be effective in creating habitat for some fire specialists at least in the short term.


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