Mapping of Burnt area and Burnt Severity using Landsat 8 Images: A Case Study of Bandipur forest Fire Region of Karnataka state India

Addressing frequent forest fire incidents especially in reserved areas such as National parks is very significant to restore the natural habitat for wild life. The post fire burnt area mapping, assessing the burnt severity is very essential for the forest department to take up precautionary measures and plan for vegetation restoration activities. A Forest fire incident was reported in Bandipur National Park, a tiger reserve area on Feb 22
^nd
2019 and lasted for 4 days till Feb 26
^th
2019. The study analyses the remote sensing data of Landsat 8, pre and post fire images over Bandipur area to map the burnt area and determine the burnt severity through normalized burn ratio (NBR) and differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR). Further vegetation regrowth of the affected area of the post fire incident is assessed by Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI).