Assessing burn severity using satellite time series

In this study a multi-temporal differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBRMT) is presented to assess burn severity of the 2007 Peloponnese (Greece) wildfires. 8day composites were created using the daily near infrared (NIR) and mid infrared (MIR) reflectance products of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). Prior to the calculation of the dNBRMT a pixelbased control plot selection procedure was initiated for each burned pixel based on time series similarity of the pre-fire year 2006 to estimate the spatio-temporal NBR dynamics in the case that no fire event would have occurred. The dNBRMT is defined as the one-year post-fire integrated difference between the NBR values of the control and focal pixels. As such, the dNBRMT accounts for both the direct fire impact and vegetation responses. The dNBRMT, based on coarse resolution imagery with high temporal frequency, has the potential to become either a valuable complement to fine resolution Landsat dNBR mapping or an imperative option for assessing burn severity at a continental to global scale.