Short-term recovery of post-fire vegetation is primarily limited by drought in Mediterranean forest ecosystems

Abstract

Climate change is altering the fire regime and compromising the post-fire recovery of vegetation worldwide. To understand the factors influencing post-fire vegetation cover restoration, we calculated the recovery of vegetation in 200,000 hectares of western Mediterranean forest burned by 268 wildfires over a 27-year period (1988–2015). We used time series of the Tasseled Cap Transformation Brightness (TCTB) spectral transformation over Landsat imagery to calculate vegetation recovery. Then, we quantified the importance of the main drivers of post-fire vegetation recovery (climate, fire severity, and topography) along an aridity gradient (semi-arid, sub-humid, and humid) using Random Forest models.

Marcos Rodrigues

Professor of Geographic Information Science

My research interests include forest fires, spatial analysis and forestry.