Evaluation of Prescribed Fires from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Imagery and Machine Learning Algorithms

Pérez-Rodríguez, L.A. Quintano, C., Marcos, E., Suarez-Seoane, S., Calvo, L., Fernández-Manso, A. (2020) - Evaluation of Prescribed Fires from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Imagery and Machine Learning Algorithms - Remote Sensing

 Prescribed fires have been applied in many countries as a useful management tool to

prevent large forest fires. Knowledge on burn severity is of great interest for predicting post-fire

evolution in such burned areas and, therefore, for evaluating the e cacy of this type of action. In this

research work, the severity of two prescribed fires that occurred in “La Sierra de Urí a” (Asturias,

Spain) in October 2017, was evaluated. An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) with a Parrot SEQUOIA

multispectral camera on board was used to obtain post-fire surface reflectance images on the green

(550 nm), red (660 nm), red edge (735 nm), and near-infrared (790 nm) bands at high spatial resolution

(GSD 20 cm). Additionally, 153 field plots were established to estimate soil and vegetation burn

severity. Severity patterns were explored using Probabilistic Neural Networks algorithms (PNN)

based on field data and UAV image-derived products. PNN classified 84.3% of vegetation and 77.8%

of soil burn severity levels (overall accuracy) correctly. Future research needs to be carried out to

validate the e cacy of this type of action in other ecosystems under di erent climatic conditions and

fire regimes.

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SI

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Artículos

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12