Assessing Metrics for Estimating Fire Induced Change in the Forest Understorey Structure Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning

Remote Sensing

Vaibhav Gupta¹  Karin J. Reinke¹  Simon D. Jones¹  Luke Wallace¹  Lucas Holden¹  Randolph H. Wynne² 

[1] School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia; E-Mails:School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia;

关键词: terrestrial LiDAR;    change detection;    understorey;    prescribed burns;    terrestrial laser scanning;    single-scan;    LiDAR metrics;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs70608180

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Quantifying post-fire effects in a forested landscape is important to ascertain burn severity, ecosystem recovery and post-fire hazard assessments and mitigation planning. Reporting of such post-fire effects assumes significance in fire-prone countries such as USA, Australia, Spain, Greece and Portugal where prescribed burns are routinely carried out. This paper describes the use of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) to estimate and map change in the forest understorey following a prescribed burn. Eighteen descriptive metrics are derived from bi-temporal TLS which are used to analyse and visualise change in a control and fire-altered plot. Metrics derived are Above Ground Height-based (AGH) percentiles and heights, point count and mean intensity. Metrics such as AGH50_change, mean AGH_change and point count_change are sensitive enough to detect subtle fire-induced change (28%–52%) whilst observing little or no change in the control plot (0–4%). A qualitative examination with field measurements of the spatial distribution of burnt areas and percentage area burnt also show similar patterns. This study is novel in that it examines the behaviour of TLS metrics for estimating and mapping fire induced change in understorey structure in a single-scan mode with a minimal fixed reference system. Further, the TLS-derived metrics can be used to produce high resolution maps of change in the understorey landscape.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.