Miranda, A., Mentler, R., Moletto-Lobos, I., Alfaro, G., Aliaga, L., Balbontin, D., et al. (2022). The Landscape Fire Scars Database: mapping historical burned area and fire severity in Chile. Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14(8), 3599–3613.
Abstract: Achieving a local understanding of fire regimes requires high-resolution, systematic and dynamic databases. High-quality information can help to transform evidence into decision-making in the context of rapidly changing landscapes, particularly considering that geographical and temporal patterns of fire regimes and their trends vary locally over time. Global fire scar products at low spatial resolutions are available, but high-resolution wildfire data, especially for developing countries, are still lacking. Taking advantage of the Google Earth Engine (GEE) big-data analysis platform, we developed a flexible workflow to reconstruct individual burned areas and derive fire severity estimates for all reported fires. We tested our approach for historical wild-fires in Chile. The result is the Landscape Fire Scars Database, a detailed and dynamic database that reconstructs 8153 fires scars, representing 66.6% of the country's officially recorded fires between 1985 and 2018. For each fire event, the database contains the following information: (i) the Landsat mosaic of pre- and post-fire images; (ii) the fire scar in binary format; (iii) the remotely sensed estimated fire indexes (the normalized burned ratio, NBR, and the relative delta normalized burn ratio, RdNBR); and two vector files indicating (iv) the fire scar perimeter and (v) the fire scar severity reclassification, respectively. The Landscape Fire Scars Database for Chile and GEE script (JavaScript) are publicly available. The framework developed for the database can be applied anywhere in the world, with the only requirement being its adaptation to local factors such as data availability, fire regimes, land cover or land cover dynamics, vegetation recovery, and cloud cover. The Landscape Fire Scars Database for Chile is publicly available in https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.941127 (Miranda et al., 2022).
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Sanchez, R., Briones, M. J., Gamboa, A., Monsalve, R., Berroeta, D., & Valenzuela, L. (2023). Delimitation of burned areas in Chile based on dNBR thresholds adjusted according to region and land cover. Rev. de Teledeteccion, 61, 43–58.
Abstract: The delimitation of burned areas is an important step for the study of forest fires, and the use of satellite remote sensing allows a scalable methodology. Previous studies use a dNBR threshold to determine the presence of burned areas, but this threshold is affected by vegetation variability determined by the geography of the study area and land use coverage. For them, the difference in the normalized index of burned areas (dNBR) was used to study the mega fires that affected the central zone of Chile in the summer of 2017. An automated methodology was developed that, based on satellite images and polygons of the burned areas provided by the National Forestry Corporation of Chile (CONAF) generates a set of dNBR thresholds differentiated by administrative region and land use. The application of differentiated dNBR thresholds significantly improves the accuracy of the burnt area delimitation model, although it does not achieve satisfactory results for all land uses. This methodological advance will make it possible to improve the design and control of policies for the prevention, conservation and restoration of ecosystems affected by forest fires.
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