Satellite Monitoring of Wildfire Impacts on the Conditions of Various Types of Vegetation Cover in the Federal Districts of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The results of an analysis of the long-term series of remote sensing data from Terra/Aqua satellites (Burned Area MCD64A1 monthly product, the 6th collection) and Landsat satellites are presented to estimate the dynamics of of the vegetation cover condition caused by wildfires throughout the Russian Federation and in its individual regions. An approach to the use of remote sensing and geoinformatics methods for monitoring the impact of wildfires on the state of various types of vegetation cover without involving ground truth data is proposed. Potential for using a normalized burn ratio index to estimate the degree of vegetation damage and recovery process using low-resolution satellite data is demonstrated. It was established that the total area of burned vegatation over the country ranged from 68.40 to 234.46 thousand km² per year for the period from 2002 till 2017. Seasonal peaks of fire activity, patterns of the spatial distribution of fire sources, and the main types of burned vegetation were identified for each of the eight federal districts of Russia. The accuracy of burned areas detection was estimated as 75–81% depending on the information product used according to the low (500 m) and average (30 m) spatial resolution data.