Forest Fire Spread Monitoring and Vegetation Dynamics Detection Based on Multi-Source Remote Sensing Images

Abstract

With the increasingly severe damage wreaked by forest fires, their scientific and effective prevention and control has attracted the attention of countries worldwide. The breakthrough of remote sensing technologies implemented in the monitoring of fire spread and early warning has become the development direction for their prevention and control. However, a single remote sensing data collection point cannot simultaneously meet the temporal and spatial resolution requirements of fire spread monitoring. This can significantly affect the efficiency and timeliness of fire spread monitoring. This article focuses on the mountain fires that occurred in Muli County, on 28 March 2020, and in Jingjiu Township on 30 March 2020, in Liangshan Prefecture, Sichuan Province, as its research objects. Multi-source satellite remote sensing image data from Planet, Sentinel-2, MODIS, GF-1, GF-4, and Landsat-8 were used for fire monitoring. The spread of the fire time series was effectively and quickly obtained using the remote sensing data at various times. Fireline information and fire severity were extracted based on the calculated differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR). This study collected the meteorological, terrain, combustibles, and human factors related to the fire. The random forest algorithm analyzed the collected data and identified the main factors, with their order of importance, that affected the spread of the two selected forest fires in Sichuan Province. Finally, the vegetation coverage before and after the fire was calculated, and the relationship between the vegetation coverage and the fire severity was analyzed. The results showed that the multi-source satellite remote sensing images can be utilized and implemented for time-evolving forest fires, enabling forest managers and firefighting agencies to plan improved firefighting actions in a timely manner and increase the effectiveness of firefighting strategies. For the forest fires in Sichuan Province studied here, the meteorological factors had the most significant impact on their spread compared with other forest fire factors. Among all variables, relative humidity was the most crucial factor affecting the spread of forest fires. The linear regression results showed that the vegetation coverage and dNBR were significantly correlated before and after the fire. The vegetation coverage recovery effects were different in the fire burned areas depending on fire severity. High vegetation recovery was associated with low-intensity burned areas. By combining the remote sensing data obtained by multi-source remote sensing satellites, accurate and macro dynamic monitoring and quantitative analysis of wildfires can be carried out. The study’s results provide effective information on the fires in Sichuan Province and can be used as a technical reference for fire spread monitoring and analysis through remote sensing, enabling accelerated emergency responses.