Mapping and exploring variation in post-fire vegetation recovery following mixed severity wildfire using airborne LiDAR

There is a public perception that large high severity wildfires decrease biodiversity and increase fire hazard by homogenising vegetation composition and increasing the cover of mid-story vegetation. But a growing literature suggests that vegetation responses are nuanced. LiDAR technology provides a promising remote sensing tool to test hypotheses about post-fire vegetation regrowth because vegetation cover can be quantified within different height strata at fine-scales over large areas. We assess the usefulness of airborne LiDAR data for measuring post-fire mid-story vegetation regrowth over a range of spatial resolutions (10x10m, 30x30m, 50x50m, 100x100m cell size) and investigate the effect of fire severity on regrowth amount and spatial pattern following a mixed severity wildfire in Warrumbungle National Park, Australia. We predicted that recovery would be more vigorous in areas of high fire severity, because park managers observed dense post-fire regrowth in these areas. Moderate t...