Identifying and Evaluating Fire Severity: A Case Study of Wulin Fire

The main purpose of the present study is to develop a methodology to classify fire severity in a very short period following a fire. The methodology developed here is to correlate the relationship between ground data and NDVI from the SPOT satellite image. We surveyed the burned site of Wulin fire in 2002 and set up 20 plots along the different altitudes. Fire severity was identified by stem charred, crown consumed, litter remained, scorch height, and diameter of trees. The results showed that fire severity consists of 3 classes. All of them have high correlation with NDVI. Among the 3 classes, the severity of heavy class relates to NDVI < 0. The moderate class is identified by NDVI from 0~0.103, and the light class is those NDVI >0.103. Using the above criteria, only 7.84 ha was estimated as heavy class. One third of total burned area (106.73 ha) was classified as moderate. Most of the burned areas (236.35 ha) were just light influenced.