Classification of Mediterranean vegetation by TM and ancillary data for the evaluation of fire risk

Abstract

Mediterranean vegetation is strongly subjected to the risk of wild res, which can become a major cause of land degradation. The knowledge of the spatial variations of this risk is essential, therefore, for forest resource management. Relying on the fact that diOE erent vegetation types can be associated with diOE erent risk levels, a classi cation approach based on the use of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) scenes is currently proposed for the generation of maps related to re risk. Hard and fuzzy classi cations were tested for this purpose on Elba island (central Italy), taking into account the eOE ects of the use of scenes from diOE erent periods (spring and summer) and of ancillary data. The re risk images obtained were evaluated by comparison with the re events that occurred on the island during the last decade. The results show that, while the acquisition period has only minor eOE ects, classi cation accuracy is strongly dependent on the inclusion of ancillary data. Moreover, the fuzzy approach better exploits the information of the integrated datasets, producing maps which are temporally stable and highly indicative of the re risk in the study area.

Using aster multispectral imagery for mapping woody invasive species in pico da vara natural reserve (Azores Islands, Portugal)

“…The second phase had, as main goal, the geoprocessing of GIS terrain data for classificationscheme integration (SENOO et al, 1990;MASELLI et al, 2000). First, the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was reclassified into a 6 class's hypsometry raster dataset according to "Sweet Pittosporum" spatial distribution range in Pico da Vara Nature Reserve (meters): 330-450; 450-600; 600-750; 750-900; 900-1050; 1050-1103.…”

Fire models and methods to map fuel types: The role of remote sensing

“…Most commonly, these studies have been based on medium-resolution sensors, such as SPOT-HRV (Systeme Pour l'Observation de la Terre -Haute Resolution Visible), Landsat MSS (Multispectral Scanner) orTM (Thematic Mapper) (De Wulf et al, 1990;Salas and Chuvieco, 1995;Castro and Chuvieco, 1998;Maselli et al, 2000;van Wagtendonk and Root, 2003). In the last years, the development of new sensors with higher resolutions has also allowed the study of forest fuels at smaller scales (Giakoumakis et al, 2002;Arroyo et al, 2005Arroyo et al, , 2006Gitas et al, 2006;Lasaponara and Lanorte, 2007a).…”

“…In some cases, they can become a significant cause of land degradation (Maselli et al, 2000;Alloza et al, 2006;Fernandez et al, 2007). As a response to this concern, numerous studies have analyzed aspects related to fire behaviour, its suppression and effects (Barrett, 1988;Fryer and Johnson, 1988).…”

Large wildland fires in three diverse regions in Spain from 1978 to 2010.

“…(houses, infrastructures, roads, power lines and others) and the life of f iref ighters and people (Maselli et al, 2000). LWF accounted for the majority of the total area burned despite their small percentage of the total number of fire (Stocks et al, 2003;Molina et al, 2010) and the most resulting damage is concentrated in them (Ganteaume and Jappiot, 2012;Alvarado et al, 1998).…”