Burn Severity and Land Cover Transition in the McNally Fire

Remote sensing techniques can be used to estimate burn severity in areas affected by wildfires. The Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) is a radiometric measure of burn severity that was developed specifically to be calculated from Landsat TM image data.¹ One way that we might evaluate whether NBR accurately measures burn severity is to look at patterns of regrowth after a fire and see whether low severity areas perform differently than high severity areas. To test this approach, I looked at the McNally Fire, which burned 150,000 acres of Sequoia National Forest in 2002.

• Slides
• Methods and Results

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You can contact me at gglouser@gmail.com.

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1. Key, C. H., and Benson, N. C. 1999. Measuring and remote sensing of burn severity: the CBI and NBR. Poster abstract. https://archive.usgs.gov/archive/sites/www.nrmsc.usgs.gov/files/norock/products/SEVER36_im_copy6.pdf ↩