Use of LiDAR and multispectral imagery to determine conifer mortality and burn severity following the lockheed fire
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The effects of wildfire on tree mortality, stand structure, and regeneration are major concerns in many California ecosystems. These effects are often highly variable across the landscape and can be difficult to assess at broad scales. There are few datasets that provide a detailed description of stand conditions, both before and after wildland fire, particularly in the Coast Redwood forest type. This study provides a unique collection of pre- and post-fire remote sensing data to evaluate the effects of the 2009 Lockheed Fire, a 7,817 ac wildland fire that occurred near Santa Cruz, California. High resolution, discrete-return airborne LiDAR collected in 2008 and 2010, provide detailed metrics of horizontal and vertical structure of second-growth Coast Redwood forest impacted by fire. In addition, 1 m color infrared imagery collected in 2009 and 2010, enable "fusion" of the three-dimensional LiDAR attributes with multispectral imagery. Remotely-derived estimates of burn severity will be compared to field-based assessments of burn severity and tree mortality conducted at 83 GPSlocated forest inventory plots. With these data, many parameters are available to characterize changes in vegetation condition following the fire including overhead canopy cover, vegetation height, vertical distribution of LiDAR returns, and indices of surface reflectance, such as NDVI.