Spectral analysis of charcoal on soils: implications for wildland fire severity mapping methods

Recent studies in theWestern United States have supported climate scenarios that predict a higher occurrence of large and severe wildfires. Knowledge of the severity is important to infer long-term biogeochemical, ecological, and societal impacts, but understanding the sensitivity of any severity mappingmethod to variations in soil type and increasing charcoal (char) cover is essential before widespread adoption. Through repeated spectral analysis of increasing charcoal quantities on six representative soils, we found that addition of charcoal to each soil resulted in linear spectral mixing.We found that performance of the NormalisedBurnRatio was highly sensitive to soil type, whereas theNormalisedDifference Vegetation Indexwas relatively insensitive. Our conclusions have potential implications for national programs that seek to monitor long-term trends inwildfire severity and underscore the need to collect accurate soils informationwhen evaluating large-scale wildland fires. Additional keywords: ash, char, combustion residue, remote sensing.