Assessment of Burn Severity using Different Fire Indices: A Case Study of Bandipur National Park

Forest fires are the significant catastrophic events which affect the landscape and vegetation in forested lands. They cause loss of biodiversity, land degradation & ecological imbalance. As the forest fires cause high damage to the habitat, it is of utmost necessity to assess the impact of fire. Burn severity mapping contributes to the evaluation of fire severity and extent of burnt areas. In this article, recently occurred forest fire (21st to 25th February 2019) in Bandipur national park was assessed using remote sensing techniques for mapping burnt area and burn severity as on-site estimations are highly impossible during forest fires. Three established fire severity indices differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR), relativized burn ratio (RBR) and relativized dNBR (RdNBR) are assessed and compared based on number of active fire points provided by MODIS & VIIRS. The RdNBR resulted in an accuracy of 89.14% whereas RBR and dNBR produced an efficiency of 52.48% and 60.633% respectively. The burnt area under high severity was around 4099 hectares. Post-fire assessment is an essential element for finding the effects of fire on vegetation and implementing mitigation strategies.