To link indexes obtained by remote sensing with live fuel moisture and fire occurrence

TODONE, J. F.; DEFOSSÉ, GUILLERMO EMILIO; BIANCHI, LUCAS O.

Puerto Madryn

Congreso; 5th Plenary Meeting & 1er Simposio Sudamericano de Ecología y Manejo del Fuego; 2009

One of the main factors that affect propagation and behaviour of forest fires is the moisture content of live fuels (LFMC). Although there are several well established methods to precisely determine LFMC, the majority of them, which imply sampling in the field, are costly and time consuming. Satellite Imagery has developed several tools that appropriately used, could help reduce the time and costs of these determinations, producing LFMC data of wide forest areas with acceptable degree of accuracy. To test this, we tried to relate LFMC of one of the most representative forest types of Andean Patagonia Nothofagus antarctica (i.e. Ñire forests), with the reflectance values and spectral indices derived from MODIS satellite images. The importance of the study of these relationships relies in the possibility of estimating the actual hydrologic status of live fuels of this forest and being able to predict it at different times during the growing season. And also allow to determine the relationship between the actual hydrologic status of live fuels with fire occurrence in a wide area of the natural distribution of Ñire forest in Patagonia.