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Steel, Zachary L.; Fogg, Alissa M.; Burnett, Ryan D.; Roberts, L. Jay; Safford, Hugh D.

doi:10.1111/ddi.13351

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Wildfires shape the stand structure, species composition, nutrient cycling, as well as many other processes in forest ecosystems (Reilly et al, 2006;Wieder et al, 2009;McGee et al, 2015;Koontz et al, 2020). Extreme wildfire events can result in extensive tree mortality, posing threats to the ecosystem's biodiversity, resilience, and stability (Crockett and Westerling, 2018;Stevens-Rumann et al, 2018;Steel et al, 2022). With climate warming, rising temperatures and declining precipitation have facilitated the increased incidence of wildfires in many regions across the globe (Liu et al, 2010;Jolly et al, 2015;Davis et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the effects of burn severity on post-fire tree structures using the fused drone and mobile laser scanning point clouds

Qi¹,

Coops²,

Daniels³

et al. 2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Wildfires burn heterogeneously across the landscape and create complex forest structures. Quantifying the structural changes in post-fire forests is critical to evaluating wildfire impacts and providing insights into burn severities. To advance the understanding of burn severities at a fine scale, forest structural attributes at the individual tree level need to be examined. The advent of drone laser scanning (DLS) and mobile laser scanning (MLS) has enabled the acquisition of high-density point clouds to resolve fine structures of individual trees. Yet, few studies have used DLS and MLS data jointly to examine their combined capability to describe post-fire forest structures. To assess the impacts of the 2017 Elephant Hill wildfire in British Columbia, Canada, we scanned trees that experienced a range of burn severities 2 years post-fire using both DLS and MLS. After fusing the DLS and MLS data, we reconstructed quantitative structure models to compute 14 post-fire biometric, volumetric, and crown attributes. At the individual tree level, our data suggest that smaller pre-fire trees tend to experience higher levels of crown scorch than larger pre-fire trees. Among trees with similar pre-fire sizes, those within mature stands (age class: > 50 years) had lower levels of crown scorch than those within young stands (age class: 15—50 years). Among pre-fire small- and medium-diameter trees, those experiencing high crown scorch had smaller post-fire crowns with unevenly distributed branches compared to unburned trees. In contrast, pre-fire large-diameter trees were more resistant to crown scorch. At the plot level, low-severity fires had minor effects, moderate-severity fires mostly decreased tree height, and high-severity fires significantly reduced diameter at breast height, height, and biomass. Our exploratory factor analyses further revealed that stands dominated by trees with large crown sizes and relatively wide spacing could burn less severely than stands characterized by regenerating trees with high crown fuel density and continuity. Overall, our results demonstrate that fused DLS-MLS point clouds can be effective in quantifying post-fire tree structures, which facilitates foresters to develop site-specific management plans. The findings imply that the management of crown fuel abundance and configuration could be vital to controlling burn severities.

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