Wildfire Prevention Using Remote Sensing
Case Study of The Red Bench Fire
In 1988 a fire was started by a lightning strike in the Flathead National Forest and in the Glacier National Park in Montana. The fire originated in the Flathead national forest and spread to the Glacier National Forest. This fire burned up until the end of September. This fire burned about 15,000 Hectares of land.
Utilizing the benefits of remote sensing they were able to really study this fire well and classify it in many different ways. First off they were able to look at the area of the fire before it started and determine why it burned by looking at the different fuel sources and the wetness of the area. When they did this they found that there was an infestation of the Mountain Pine Beetle, which meant there was ample amounts of dead dry wood, allowing for hot intense burns. Also, they were able to look at the different types of habitats and species that were damaged or destroyed and how badly they were damaged by comparing before and after satellite images.
Secondly, they were able to classify the burns into three different categories light, moderate, and severe by looking at the reflectance of the soil, the foliage, and the small fuels consumed. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was hugely beneficial in the study of this fire. Using the NDVI they were able to clearly see the change in the vegetation mass before and after the fire. The NDVI was also incredibly helpful in looking at the regeneration of the land after the fire occurred. Using this index they were able to see the forest regenerate after the fire and could tell how fast the forest would recover a few years down the road.
In the end Remote Sensing was incredibly helpful in the study of the Red Bench Fire of 1988 and the methods used here can also be used across the world to help study and assess forest fires. This is especially true with the fact that this was 1988 technology where most imaging processes were analog, but with vast improvements in the Remote Sensing field and the transition to the digital age studying these fires is now a much faster, easier, and more accurate process than it was in 1988.
Red Bench FIre 1988
More Information on the Red Bench Fire of 1988 can be found here
This is an Aerial oblique image of an area that burned during the fire, 8 years after the fire occured. We can still see the damaged areas from the fire, but the forest is slowly regrowing.
Here is an image from ground level that was taken during surveys. Here we can see that there was a lot of fuel consumed as there are few trees standing. We can also see the "ghosts" of burned logs, where the soil underneath is not nearly as charred as the surrounding soil.