BURNED LAND MAPPING FROM REMOTE SENSING IMAGERY

Claudio Conese, Research Leader

Laura Bonora, Researcher
Institute of Biometeorology (IBIMET)
National Research Council of Italy
Area della Ricerca, Ed. D
V. Madonna del Piano, Sesto Fiorentino
Florence, Italy

ABSTRACT
A Burned Scare Mapping (BSM) model for mapping burned areas at local and regional scale is proposed. It
has been defined to process specifically Landsat images, but can be easily applied to other type of
multispectral sensors previous a redefinition of the spectral indexes; it is characterised by a modular structure,
so that each module (corresponding to one step of the algorithm) can be separately implemented.
The model has been tested on Tuscany Region, on year 2000 fire season for which a sufficient dataset was
available. The output is represented by a thematic map including the burned areas characterised by a level of
confidence (LOC) related to the probability that the area actually represents a burned surface. A step-down
procedure has been defined, to exclude or maintain only the pixels with the highest probability of being
burned.
The model can be considered as a double-step one:
1. the identification of Burned Core Pixels, inside each burned areas, with the highest probability of
being burned.
2. burned area shape definition, by a region growing procedure starting from the core pixels.
The procedure is based on the following steps:
1. Pre-Processing: to prepare the satellite images and ancillary information.
2. Spectral Indexes Calculation: to select the spectral characteristics of burned areas.
3. Change Detection Analysis: to identify the pixels to be used as seeds for the burned areas
shape refinement phase.
4. Core Pixels Identification: classification thresholds are defined basing on the spectral analysis
of different typologies of burned surfaces.
5. Shape Refinement: for the precise definition of the burned areas.

INTRODUCTION
The Italian low about forest fires defines the information regarding burned areas that have to be collected
in order to plan the opportune actions to recover and maintain the previous land destination. The most
interesting data are number of fires, extension of burned areas, type of land cover, damage entity. In the real
situations, very often these kinds of data are missing or incomplete, so that no interventions are carried out,
with the consequence of soil erosion and degradation important events. The risk level is higher in
Mediterranean environment, characterised by rainy autumns. The statistics on fire incidence, their extension
and cover/soil characteristics could be very useful for a correct management of post-fire phase.
At the present, several different methodologies are followed to collect this kind of data. The ground
collecting is the most classic, but it is very time demanding e strongly dependent on the subjective
observation. The use of GPS system makes it more reliable and faster, but in any case a quite large number of
personnel is necessary.
The alternative is the remote sensing technology, both from plane and satellite. The first one in very
reliable, but still quite expensive. The second one, even if less precise and dependent by atmospheric
conditions, is relatively economic and can give information on a large area. Several studies have showed that
the possible errors are of four types: the burned areas can be confused with water bodies, urban areas, shadows
and, if the fire intensity has been quite low, with scarce no-burned vegetation.
In this paper a methodology for the individuation of burned areas from satellite data is described; it allows
to map these areas larger than one hectare in an automatic or semiautomatic way, reducing the errors in a
significant level. A first level of testing of the procedure has been carried out in the framework of an DUP
ESA Project.

Pecora 16 Global Priorities in Land Remote Sensing

October 23-27, 2005*Sioux Falls, South Dakota

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Landsat 5 and 7 images have been used, regarding years 1998, 1999, 2000. The acquisition periods have
been between April and May (before fire season) and between September and October (after fire season).
Ancillary data have been Corine land cover and Forestry Service database.
The output is the Burn Scare Map (BSM) including polygons of burned areas (more than one hectare) and
the indication of the correspondence level of the same polygon.
The following figure schematises the phases of the algorithm
PRE
PROCESSING

-Geo-referencing

-Radiometric
Correction

SPECTRAL
ENANCEMENT

-Spectral
Indices
Generation
- Spectral Analysis

SEEDPIXEL
IDENTIFICATION

POLYGONS
REFINEMENT

POLIGONFILE
TRASFORMATION

--Variation Analysis

- Multitreshold
Analysis
-Map of seed
pints

FOTOINTERPRETATION

PRE-PROCESSING
The first step is the geo-referring of the images in coordinate system UTM (WGS-84); the second one is
the correction of atmospheric effect to obtain absolute reflectance values; the Chavez model has been used.
The final step has been the masking of the areas, surely not burned but with similar spectral response, to
reduce the error possibilities.

SPECTRAL ENANCHEMNT
This phase consists essentially in the determination of some spectral indices suitable to individuate burned
areas. The chosen indices are in the following table:

Normalised differential infrared index

NDII =

NIR SWIR
NIR + SWIR

GEMI = (1 0.25 )
Global Environmental Monitoring Index

2 ( NIR R ) + 1.5 NIR + 0.5 R

=
NIR + R + 0.5
1
BAI =
2
( pc r r ) + ( pc ir ir ) 2
2

Burned Area Index

R 0.125
1 R

In the spectral analysis phase, some criteria have been defined in order to extract the pixel related to
burned areas, based on threshold influenced by spectral characteristics of the images.

Pecora 16 Global Priorities in Land Remote Sensing

October 23-27, 2005*Sioux Falls, South Dakota

SEED PIXEL IDENTIFICATION

This procedure aims to extract from each burned area the pixels that will be considered as seed ones, used
in the automatic procedure for burned areas mapping.
Three steps can be considered. In the first one, a spectral analysis is carried out to determine the indices
variation in images acquired before and after the fire season. The second step regards a multi threshold
analysis applied only to those pixels included in the map of Candidate Seeded. To each pixel a confidence
level is assigned, according to the number of conditions satisfied.
The last step is the production of the seeded map, where each pixel is classified as a function of its
confidence level. Starting from these pixels, the process of area refinement is performed.

VALIDATION
The ground truth data set was constituted by 40 test areas, for which the polygon of fire was defined by
GPS survey. These polygons were compared with the result of the automatic procedure.
In the following table all the analysis results are reported, with in the second column the percentage of
polygons verifying the correspondence conditions and in the third one is the mean value of the difference
between the surfaces

Type of processing
Polygons with internal seeded point
Fires not identified by round
surveys
Fires identified by
photointerpretation
Polygons with declared area (AIB)
higher than measured one (GPS)
Polygons with declared area (AIB)
lower than measured one (GPS)
Polygons with declared area (AIB)
equal to measured one (GPS)
Polygons with declared area (AIB)
higher than photointerpreted one
(remote sensing)
Polygons with declared area (AIB)
lower than photointerpreted one
(remote sensing)

Poligoni with declared area

(AIB) equal to photointerpreted
one (remote sensing)
Polygons with measured area (GPS)
higher than photointerpreted one
(remote sensing)
Polygons with measured area (GPS)
lower than photointerpreted one
(remote sensing)

Polygons with measured area

(GPS) equal to photointerpreted

56%

Significative
Differences
%
-

8.7%

56%

50%

41%

9%

57%

41%

33%

44%

11%

177%

56%

11%

53%

33%

70%

56%

one (remote sensing)

Pecora 16 Global Priorities in Land Remote Sensing

October 23-27, 2005*Sioux Falls, South Dakota

CONCLUSIONS
The algorithm has been tested on several areas with different characteristics, both morphological and of
cover type. The first results show a more than satisfactory correspondence between the processing results and
the ground survey. The Forestry Services of Tuscany Region are in charge for further validation and tuning of
the system, in order to get an operational tool for burned areas inventory and recovery actions.

REFERENCES
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MD. USA.

Pecora 16 Global Priorities in Land Remote Sensing

October 23-27, 2005*Sioux Falls, South Dakota