Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire

Thompson, Jonathan R.; Spies, Thomas A.; Ganio, Lisa M.

doi:10.1073/pnas.0700229104

Cited by 251 publications

(260 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

241

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…16-day temporal resolution, and a deep catalogue of publicly-available images dating back to 1984. Landsat images and burn severity maps derived from them have been invaluable for developing an atlas of burn severity for large fires in the US [1], determining the drivers of burn severity [2][3][4], measuring the effect of past disturbance and management on burn severity [5][6][7], and quantifying the effects of fire on biotic communities [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Metric for Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Satellite-inferred burn severity data have become increasingly popular over the last decade for management and research purposes. These data typically quantify spectral change between pre-and post-fire satellite images (usually Landsat). There is an active debate regarding which of the two main equations, the delta normalized burn ratio (dNBR) and its relativized form (RdNBR), is most suitable for quantifying burn severity; each has its critics. In this study, we propose and evaluate a new Landsat-based burn severity metric, the relativized burn ratio (RBR), that provides an alternative to dNBR and RdNBR. For 18 fires in the western US, we compared the performance of RBR to both dNBR and RdNBR by evaluating the agreement of these metrics with field-based burn severity measurements. Specifically, we evaluated (1) the correspondence between each metric and a continuous measure of burn severity (the composite burn index) and (2) the overall accuracy of each metric when classifying into discrete burn severity classes (i.e., unchanged, low, moderate, and high). Results indicate that RBR corresponds better to field-based measurements (average R 2 among 18 fires = 0.786) than both dNBR (R 2 = 0.761) and RdNBR (R 2 = 0.766). Furthermore, the overall classification accuracy achieved with RBR (average among 18 fires = 70.5%) was higher than both dNBR (68.4%) and RdNBR (69.2%). Consequently, we recommend RBR as a robust alternative to both dNBR and RdNBR for measuring and classifying burn severity. OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2014, 6 1828

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Metric for Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Spyratos et al (2007) modeled the expansion of fire at the wildland-urban interface by considering the flammability of houses. Thompson et al (2007) discussed the impact of post-wildfire management on future fire severity and concluded that areas that were salvage-logged and planted after the initial fire burned more severely than comparable unmanaged areas, suggesting that fuel conditions in conifer plantations can increase fire severity despite the removal of large woody fuels.…”

Section: Forestrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Research core and framework of sustainability science

2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reviews recent achievements in sustainability science and discusses the research core and framework of sustainability science. We analyze and organize papers published in three selected core journals of sustainability science: Sustainability Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy. Papers are organized into three categories: sustainability and its definition, domain-oriented research, and a research framework for sustainability science. First, we provide a short history and define the basic characteristics of sustainability; then we review current efforts in the following research domains: climate, biodiversity, agriculture, fishery, forestry, energy and resources, water, economic development, health, and lifestyle. Finally, we propose a research framework for sustainability science that includes the following components: goal setting, indicator setting, indicator measurement, causal chain analysis, forecasting, backcasting, and problem-solution chain analysis. We emphasize the importance of this last component for improving situations and attaining goals.

show abstract

“…Conversely, logging can make moist or wet forests more fire prone [17]. Indeed, clear evidence of such inter-relationships can be found in tropical rainforests [7,8], wet temperate forests in western North America [9], and wet temperate forests in Australia [18••, 19, 20], although some moist forests may be an exception to this general response [21].…”

Section: Logging and Fire Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Logging may alter landscape structure not only as a result of cutting patterns but also indirectly through interactions with other kinds of disturbances such as fire regimes [7][8][9]. In this report, I provide some perspectives on relationships between forest landscape structure and natural resource management, with a particular focus on the effects of logging in wet forests where fire regimes (sensu [10,11]) are typically rare, highseverity stand-replacing conflagrations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interactions between Forest Resource Management and Landscape Structure

Lindenmayer

2016

Curr Landscape Ecol Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Logging of natural forests can directly alter landscape structure, defined here as the spatial pattern of patches of overstory forest cover of different ages. Logging can also alter landscape structure through interactions with other disturbances such as wildfire. Here, I briefly outline interactions between logging of wet forests, altered fire dynamics and landscape structure, with particular emphasis on the wet ash eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australia. There is compelling evidence for increased fire proneness of logged and regenerated wet forest stands around the world. There is also evidence of accumulated effects on fire dynamics, so-called Blandscape traps^that are associated with multiple, spatially dispersed cutblocks in wood production landscapes. That is, changes in stand-level flammability may accumulate over larger areas, thereby influencing patterns of spatial contagion in fire behavior. The impacts of altered patterns of landscape structure on biodiversity and ecosystem processes are often poorly understood. New science is required to better understand, quantify, and predict biotic responses to the new landscape dynamics and the spatial and temporal patterns of forest cover now occurring in many landscapes. Altered patterns of landscape structure have the potential to trigger ecosystem collapse in some forested environments. However, predicting ecosystem collapse is difficult and may even be impossible from a practical perspective. Managers and researchers need to become better informed about the risks of negative effects of combinations of ecosystem stressors that lead to novel spatial patterns in landscape structure and may make forest ecosystems more prone to landscape traps, regime shifts, and ecosystem collapse.

show abstract

Reburn severity in managed and unmanaged vegetation in a large wildfire

Cited by 251 publications

References 29 publications

A New Metric for Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio

A New Metric for Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio

Research core and framework of sustainability science

Interactions between Forest Resource Management and Landscape Structure

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About