Over the past couple of decades, fires have experienced changes on a global scale. These changing fire regimes point to an alarming direction where fire-dependent ecosystems are experiencing a decline in burned area, while fire-independent ecosystems are experiencing an increase. As a result, land cover change is seen in both types of ecosystems where the native plant communities run the risk of disappearing, and recovery becomes increasingly important. One of the areas experiencing a notable increase in fires is California, US. Here, both observed and projected changes indicate increasing frequency of fires, fire size and fire severity. In this study, post-fire recovery for 5 land cover types in California is compared using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series. Two metrics are used for post-fire recovery, where a metric that describes short-term recovery is found most appropriate for a comparison between land cover types. It is found that the land cover type “Trees” has the longest recovery, followed by “Herbaceous/Shrubs”. Faster recovery times are found in the late fire season compared to the early fire season, indicating an influence of precipitation on post-fire vegetation recovery. Similarly, faster recovery times are found in a semi-arid climate zone compared to the Mediterranean climate zones. This indicates the potential influence of species composition on post-fire vegetation recovery. Results particularly show differences in post-fire recovery between land cover types, but also between fire seasons and climate zones. To examine these details in further detail, fire severity, meteorological data, and a more detailed classification for vegetation types could be implemented as factors determining post-fire recovery.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-489665 |
Date | January 2022 |
Creators | Wu, Viktor |
Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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