Integrated fire severity–land cover mapping using very-high-spatial-resolution aerial imagery and point clouds

Fire severity mapping is conventionally accomplished through the interpretation of aerial photography or the analysis of moderate- to coarse-spatial-resolution pre- and post-fire satellite imagery. Although these methods are well established, there is a demand from both forest managers and fire scientists for higher-spatial-resolution fire severity maps. This study examines the utility of high-spatial-resolution post-fire imagery and digital aerial photogrammetric point clouds acquired from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to produce integrated fire severity–land cover maps. To accomplish this, a suite of spectral, structural and textural variables was extracted from the UAV-acquired data. Correlation-based feature selection was used to select subsets of variables to be included in random forest classifiers. These classifiers were then used to produce disturbance-based land cover maps at 5- and 1-m spatial resolutions. By analysing maps produced using different variables, the highest-performing spectral, structural and textural variables were identified. The maps were produced with high overall accuracies (5m, 89.5±1.4%; 1m, 85.4±1.5%), with the 1-m classification produced at slightly lower accuracies. This reduction was attributed to the inclusion of four additional classes, which increased the thematic detail enough to outweigh the differences in accuracy.