Fire-prone areas delineated from a combination of the Nesterov Fire-risk Rating Index with multispectral satellite data
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Fire-prone areas delineated from a combination of the Nesterov Fire-risk Rating Index with multispectral satellite data Milan Onderka & Igor Melicherčik
Received: 21 April 2009 / Accepted: 19 November 2009 / Published online: 9 December 2009 # Società Italiana di Fotogrammetria e Topografia (SIFET) 2009
Abstract Traditional fire-risk rating indices are founded on statistical relations between pre-event meteorological conditions and the number of fire outbreaks observed in a forested area. However, traditional weather-based indices cannot render information on the spatial distribution of firesusceptible sites over extensive forested areas because their only inputs are meteorological observations made at sparsely distributed weather stations. Therefore, only an area-averaged value of the risk of fire can be obtained from these indices. This disadvantage can be relieved by using remote sensing data from polar-orbiting satellites scanning the Earth's surface in the visible and thermal spectral regions. This paper presents a synthesis of the Nesterov Fire-rating Index, an index extensively used in Central and Eastern Europe—and how this was merged with the Temperature–Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) derived from multispectral images scanned by Landsat ETM+. This paper demonstrates the methodology of how TVDI was merged with the Nesterov Index to give a map of the spatial patterns of fire-prone sites. The test region is located in a pine-forested (dominated by Pinus sylvestris) area in western Slovakia. Our investigation suggests that coupling TVDI with the Nesterov Index, or any other weather-based fire-rating index, can become an effective tool for delineating areas prone to fire outbreaks
M. Onderka (*) Institute of Hydrology, SAS, Račianska 75, 832 01 Bratislava, Slovakia e-mail: [email protected] I. Melicherčik Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina, 842 48 Bratislava, Slovakia
even in regions with insufficient coverage of weather stations. Keywords Wildfire . Forest fire . TVDI . Landsat ETM+ . Nesterov Index
Introduction The likelihood that a fire will break out in a forest is traditionally assessed by deploying empirical indices using basic meteorological data. There are several indices in use worldwide, e.g., the Nesterov Index (in Russia), Angstom Index (Northern Europe), Baumgartner Index (Germany), and the Canadian Fire Weather Index. The fundamental feature of weather-based indices is that they are based on simplified statistical relationships between the reported number of fire events and several weather data characterizing the pre-event weather conditions. However, weather-based indices can provide only an area-averaged risk of fire, as their only input (weather data) is acquired from point measurements taken at representative weather stations. The climate, topography, and the type of vegetation are recognized as additional factors modulating the fire potential and the rate of spread (Škvarenina et al. 2004). Microclimatic conditions, i.e.,
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