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Articles containing the keyword 'surface differencing'

Category : Climate resilient and sustainable forest management – Research article

article id 23061, category Climate resilient and sustainable forest management – Research article
Noora Tienaho, Ninni Saarinen, Tuomas Yrttimaa, Ville Kankare, Mikko Vastaranta. (2024). Quantifying fire-induced changes in ground vegetation using bitemporal terrestrial laser scanning. Silva Fennica vol. 58 no. 3 article id 23061. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.23061
Keywords: forest fires; biomass; boreal forest; LIDAR; controlled burning; surface differencing; surface fires
Highlights: Bitemporal terrestrial laser scanning provided a means for identifying surface areas exposed to fire by utilizing a surface differencing method developed in this study; The developed method allowed for the quantification of fire-induced volumetric changes in ground vegetation at high resolution, facilitating the assessment of the impact of surface fires on forest ecosystems.
Abstract | Full text in HTML | Full text in PDF | Author Info

Forest fires pose a significant threat to forest carbon storage and sinks, yet they also play a crucial role in the natural dynamics of boreal forests. Accurate quantification of biomass changes resulting from forest fires is essential for damage assessment and controlled burning evaluation. This study utilized terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to quantify changes in ground vegetation resulting from low-intensity surface fires. TLS data were collected before and after controlled burnings at eight one-hectare test sites in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) dominated boreal forests in Finland. A surface differencing-based method was developed to identify areas exposed to fire. Validation, based on visual interpretation of 1 × 1 m surface patches (n = 320), showed a recall, precision, and F1-score of 0.9 for the accuracy of identifying burned surfaces. The developed method allowed the assessment of the magnitude of fire-induced vegetation changes within the test sites. The proportions of burned 1 × 1 m areas within the test sites varied between 51–96%. Total volumetric change in ground vegetation was on average –1200 m³ ha-1, with burning reducing the vegetation volume by 1700 m³ ha-1 and vegetation growth increasing it by 500 m³ ha-1. Substantial variations in the volumetric changes within and between the test sites were detected, highlighting the complex dynamics of surface fires, and emphasizing the importance of having observations from multiple sites. This study demonstrates that bitemporal TLS measurements provide a robust means for characterizing fire-induced changes, facilitating the assessment of the impact of surface fires on forest ecosystems.


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