Post-fire (20211019) Plant Area Index for the Muckamuck Fire

Post-fire vegetation status and condition have multiple implications. They are indicative of burn severity and the lasting impacts of fire the land; they also help inform post-fire debris flow modeling and related risk analyses, hydrology and water quality assessments, and vulnerability to invasive species. Monitoring vegetation recovery over time enables continuous re-evaluation of various post-fire hazards, thereby facilitating informed and timely responses to post-fire risks by land managers at the local level. Structure metrics were derived from spaceborne Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar data and used to map pre- and post-fire structure. Pre- and post-fire Landsat or Sentinel satellite data were obtained from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS; https://www.mtbs.gov/) program. GEDI data were intersected with each satellite band and XGBoost models were built using band values as independent variables and GEDI vegetation structure values as dependent values. The models were used to generate spatially continuous maps of structure, providing vegetation structural estimates throughout the fire perimeter and beyond.