Evaluation of pre-fire forest stands condition on burned area using space imagery and on-ground investigations

The loss of stem wood after stand destruction was evaluated on a model site - a 9-ha burned area that resultedfrom a forest and peat fire in 2010 in the Shatura district, Moscow Province. The study was carried out as part of theproject "Restoring Peatlands in Russia - for fire prevention and climate change mitigation" financed under theInternational Climate Initiative (IKI) by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation,Building and Nuclear Safety and facilitated by KfW Development Bank. Forest inventory data were unavailable forthe model site, so it was proposed to evaluate pre-fire condition of forest stands by analyzing space imagery takenbefore the fire and by verification and description of thematic classes. Classification of the multispectral Spot 5image with a spatial resolution of 10 m was carried out using the ISODATA method. Characteristics of thematicclasses were obtained using forest-geobotanical releve’s and measurements at sample plots in a non-burnedadjoining forest area. Mapping of preserved stumps with identification of tree species, age and diameter was madefor additional verification of the defined thematic classes. The loss of stem wood for the forest thematic classes aver-aged 282.2 m3/ha and for the burned area as a whole (including non-forest classes) 264.7 m3/ha. It has beendemonstrated that, even without forest inventory data, original stand characteristics for the area with stand destruc-tion (both from fire and by other reasons) can be identified using space imagery coupled with on-the-ground inves-tigation of an adjoining area.