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Modeling and mapping burn severity of prescribed and wildfires across the southeastern United States (2000-2022)

Melanie Vanderhoof , Casey Menick, Joshua Picotte, Kevin Robertson, Holly Nowell, Chris Matechik, Todd Hawbaker

Abstract

Background: The southeastern United States (“Southeast”) experiences high levels of fire activity, but the preponderance of small and prescribed fires means that existing burn severity products are incomplete across the region. Aims: We developed and applied a burn severity model across the Southeast to enhance our understanding of regional burn severity patterns. Methods: We used Composite Burn Index (CBI) plot data from across the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) to train a gradient-boosted decision tree model. The model was optimized for the Southeast and applied to the annual Landsat Burned Area product for 2000-2022 across the region. Key results: The burn severity model had a RMSE=0.48 (R2=0.70) and RMSE=0.50 (R2=0.37) for the CONUS and Southeast, respectively. The Southeast, relative to CONUS, had lower mean absolute residuals in low and moderate burn severity categories. Burn severity was consistently lower in areas affected by prescribed burns relative to wildfires. Conclusions: While regional performance was limited by a lack of high burn severity CBI plots, the burn severity dataset demonstrated patterns consistent with low-severity, frequent fire regimes characteristic of Southeastern ecosystems. Implications: More complete data on burn severity will enhance regional management of fire-dependent ecosystems and improve estimates of fuels and fire emissions.

WF24137  Accepted 07 December 2024

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