Detecting Temporal Changes in Land Cover Based on Disturbance in Alaska

Abstract:

Considerable effort has been made to understand how climate factors influence the distribution and size of wildland fire's future impact on Alaska's landscape. Another key factor for area burned in Alaska is lightning ignition. Recent and ongoing studies target the ability to understand how that will influence when, where, and how many ignitions will occur in the future. But consideration of landscape changes, due especially to that evolving distribution of fire impacts, has been assessed only coarsely. We used automated processing of periodic high resolution satellite imagery of vegetation to evaluate landscape change over a climatologically significant period (1984-2014). With that, we are better able to understand changes from disturbance and post-disturbance recovery which will aid modeling of those transitions in the future. With these improved landscape histories, detailed fire analysis can inform the role of landscape change in future fire hazard conditions.