Using Landsat imagery to backcast fire and post-fire residuals in the Boreal Shield of Saskatchewan: implications for woodland caribou management
John Kansas A F , Javier Vargas B , Hans G. Skatter C , Brady Balicki D and Kevin McCullum E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Kansas & Associates, 189 Inverness Park SE, Calgary AB, T2Z 3K6, Canada.
B Ecotone Environmental, 230 Panamount Road NW, Calgary AB, T3K 0H9 Canada.
C Omnia Ecological Services, 722-27th Avenue NW, Calgary AB, T2M 2J3, Canada.
D Cameco Corporation, 2121-11th Street West, Saskatoon SK, S7M 1J3, Canada.
E Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment, 3211 Alberta Street, Regina SK, S4S 5W6 Canada.
F Corresponding author. Email: john@kansasandassociates.com
International Journal of Wildland Fire 25(5) 597-607 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF15170
Submitted: 23 January 2015 Accepted: 14 January 2016 Published: 23 March 2016
Abstract
Boreal woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou) are designated as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. A Recovery Strategy for the boreal population of caribou identified critical habitat for all but 1 of 51 caribou ranges – Saskatchewan’s Boreal Shield (SK1). The strategy identified 65% undisturbed habitat as the threshold below which a local population was not likely to be self-sustaining. Disturbance was measured as the combined effects of fires <40 years and anthropogenic land use. The fire component of the total disturbance model used fire polygons that were delineated using traditional mapping methods. Our study maps fire from 1988–2013 using the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio analysis of Landsat Thematic mapper and Operational Land Imager. Annual burned areas based on fire perimeters were similar between traditionally and Landsat-derived inventory approaches, but the traditional methods overestimated within-burn areas by 31.8%, as a result of including post-fire residuals and water bodies as burned. The federal recovery model assumes that all lands within provincial fire polygons (<40 years) are inadequate as caribou habitat, and ignores the potential value of post-fire residuals and water bodies as habitat. For some Boreal Shield ranges including SKI, where fire comprises the majority of the total disturbance and residual patches are abundant, total disturbance calculations, critical habitat designation and range planning decisions should take into account residuals, including water bodies.
Additional keywords: caribou habitat, disturbance thresholds, dNBR, fire mapping.
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