Burn Severity Mapping

Workflow Goal

Estimate fire effects across a burn area by comparing pre-fire and post-fire surface conditions, then organize results for field review, response planning, or recovery monitoring.

Outline

• Define the fire perimeter, assessment window, pre-fire reference period, and severity classes needed by the project.
• Gather optical imagery, cloud and smoke masks, elevation context, vegetation type, and any field severity observations.
• Build pre-fire and post-fire composites that represent comparable seasonal and sensor conditions.
• Calculate burn-sensitive indices and differenced metrics, then classify severity with documented thresholds or calibration data.
• Review confusing areas such as shadows, water, bare soil, harvest, snow, and unburned vegetation change.
• Summarize severity by management unit, slope class, vegetation type, watershed, or recovery treatment area.
• Prepare maps, tabular summaries, QA notes, and candidate locations for field validation.

Later Examples

• Rapid post-fire severity screening for response teams.
• Watershed-level summary of high-severity burn concentration.
• Comparison of mapped severity with field plots.