Forest Fire Severity Mapping Of Humid Tropical Regions: A Geospatial Perspective

Document Type : Primary Research paper

Author

Associate Professor, Kalindi College,University of Delhi, East Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008

Abstract

Forest fire is important ecological stress caused by climate change and related
global warming. The frequency and severity of forest fires are anticipated to have a
significant impact on the characteristics of tropical forests. The forest areas in
Uttarakhand are often affected by fires results ina high ecological loss. Identification of
forest fire hotspot areas and related management is a prerequisite of forest fire
management. The objective of this study is to map the burn severity in the summer times of
2016 and 2017 for the Almora and Bageshwar districts of the Chamoli division in
Uttarakhand. Remote Sensing Indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index
(NDVI) and Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) are used for burn severity classification and
vegetation analysis respectively. The result showed that, compared to pre-fire NDVI, the
average NDVI Value of Post-Time Fire was lowwhich indicates a change in vegetation
cover especially in moderate to high burned areas. The result also indicates a weak inverse
relationship between NDVI and LST, but it was moderate weak to moderate, overall in the
study area. The study concludes overall moderate to strong correlation, between LST and
NBR in both pre-fire and post-fire NBR

Keywords