Abstract

ESPANA-BOQUERA, María Luisa; CHAMPO-JIMENEZ, Omar  and  URIBE-SALAS, María Dolores. Burned area and severity of forest fires in Michoacán in 2021 using Sentinel-2 images. Polibotánica [online]. 2024, n.57, pp.125-144.  Epub Apr 19, 2024. ISSN 1405-2768.  https://doi.org/10.18387/polibotanica.57.7.

Forest fires are important environmental perturbations, recurrent in the Michoacán spring, where they were particularly numerous in 2021, during the confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this work was to identify the fires of 2021, in the forest areas of northwest Michoacán, evaluating the severity and recovery from spectral vegetation indices calculated in Sentinel-2 images of different dates. The severity was determined from the dNBR (Normalized Burned Ratio increase) in spring and the recovery with the dNDVI (Normaliced Difference Vegetation Index increase) and dCIre (Chlorophylle Index Red Edge increase), in spring and winter. Five types of vegetation were distinguished (V1 to V5) according to the behavior of the NDVI on the dates considered. The burned areas were identified by classifying the May image. Of V1 (low density deciduous shrub), 15161 ha (31%) were burned, 72% with low or moderate-low damage; a great regeneration capacity was observed. Of V2 (high density deciduous, oaks), 17029 ha (34%) were burned, 64% with moderate-high or high affectation; there was sprouting after moderate fires. Of V3 and V4 (low and high density evergreen, conifers) were burned 1999 ha (4%) and 7366 ha (15%), respectively, 95% and 79% with low or moderate-low damage; there was recovery after minor fires, with greater resilience of V4. V5 (low deciduous forest) 7967 ha (16%) were burned, 91% with low or moderate-low damage, with greater recovery observed in the most affected areas, as a post-fire sprouting effect of vegetation. Remote sensing is a very versatile tool for fire assessment and recovery monitoring, although it does not replace observation in the field.

Keywords : CIre; Copernicus; COVID-19; Meseta Purépecha; NBR; NDVI.

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