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Drivers of Burn Severity in the Northern Cascade Range, Washington, USA

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Drivers of Burn Severity in the Northern Cascade Range, Washington, USA Drivers of burn severity in the northern Cascade Range, Washington, USA C. Alina Cansler A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science University of Washington 2011 Program Authorized to Offer Degree: School of Forest Resources University of Washington Graduate School This is to certify that I have examined this copy of a master’s thesis by C. Alina Cansler and have found that it is complete and satisfactory in all respects, and that any and all revisions required by the final examining committee have been made. Committee Members: _____________________________________________________ Donald McKenzie _____________________________________________________ L. Monika Moskal _____________________________________________________ Dave L. Peterson Date:__________________________________ In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of this thesis is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with “fair use” as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Any other reproduction for any purposes or by any means shall not be allowed without my written permission. Signature ________________________ Date ____________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ...................................................................................................................... i LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ iii LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................................. v CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTHERN CASCADE RANGE BURN SEVERITY ATLAS ....... 1 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 3 METHODS ............................................................................................................................ 8 RESULTS ........................................................................................................................... 15 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................... 17 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 20 TABLES ............................................................................................................................. 24 FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ 30 CHAPTER 2: THE FIRE REGIME OF THE NORTHERN CASCADE RANGE, WASHINGTON, USA:A SPATIALLY EXPLICIT ELABORATION OF THE FIRE REGIME CONCEPT ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... 37 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 39 METHODS .......................................................................................................................... 43 RESULTS ........................................................................................................................... 51 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................... 58 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................... 66 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................... 68 TABLES ............................................................................................................................. 77 FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ 86 i CHAPTER 3: CLIMATE AND TOPOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES ON BURN SEVERITY IN THE NORTHERN CASCADE RANGE, WASHINGTON, USA ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... 98 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 99 METHODS ........................................................................................................................ 102 RESULTS ......................................................................................................................... 107 DISCUSSION ..................................................................................................................... 109 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 114 FIGURES .......................................................................................................................... 119 APPENDIX I ..................................................................................................................... 125 ii LIST OF FIGURES Figure number Page 1. The study area……………………………………………………………………... 30 2. CBI data sheet……………………………………………………………………... 31 3. Map of field plot locations………………………………………………………… 32 4. Regressions base on unweighted and weighted CBI values………………………. 34 5. DNBR and RdNBR as a function of CRI using Model 2…………………………. 35 6. DNBR and RdNBR as a function of CRI using Model 3…………………………. 35 7. Map of classified burn severity images……………………………………………. 36 8. Map of ecological subsections…………………………………………………….. 86 9. Proportion of area burned by fire size (study area) ……………………………….. 87 10. Proportion of area burned by fire size (subsections)………………………………. 87 11. Burn severity by subsection……………………………………………………….. 88 12. Severity patch distributions for each subsection…………………………………... 89 13. Burn severity and fire size regressions…………………………………………….. 90 14. Gini coefficient plotted against fire size…………………………………………... 91 15. High severity patch distributions by fire size……………………………………… 92 16. High severity core area and fire size regressions………………………………….. 93 17. Contagion Index and fire size regression………………………………………….. 94 18. Aggregation Index and fire size regression………………………………………... 95 19. High severity NLSI and fire size regression………………………………………. 96 20. Clumpiness Index and fire size regressions……………………………………….. 97 21. Climate stations within the study area…………………………………………….. 119 iii 22. Fire occurrence, annual area burned and climate regressions……………………... 120 23. Burn severity and July temperature regressions…………………………………… 120 24. Mean patch size and July temperature regression…………………………………. 121 25. High-severity spatial pattern metrics and climate regressions…………………….. 122 26. Landscape level spatial pattern metrics and topographic complexity regressions… 123 27. Fire size, high severity, and high-severity core area plotted against topographical complexity…………………………………………………………………………. 124 iv LIST OF TABLES Table number Page 1. Maps of field validation plot locations…………………………………………….. 24 2. CBI severity category definitions………………………………………………….. 25 3. Comparison of pixel sub-sampling methods………………………………………. 25 4. Confusion matrices for dNBR…………………………………………………….. 26 5. Confusion matrices for RdNBR…………………………………………………… 27 6. Mean proportion of cover of each stratum………………………………………… 28 7. Classification accuracies compared to other studies………………………………. 29 8. Classification thresholds compared to other studies………………………………. 29 9. Federal land management designation and protected status………………………. 77 10. Ecological subsections and subsection groups…………………………………….. 78 11. "Landscape level" spatial metrics………………………………………………….. 79 12. "Class level" spatial metrics……………………………………………………….. 81 13. Area burned by subsection………………………………………………………… 83 14. Burn severity by subsection……………………………………………………….. 84 15. Spatial pattern metric results………………………………………………………. 85 v 1 CHAPTER 1: DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTHERN CASCADE RANGE BURN SEVERITY ATLAS ABSTRACT Remotely sensed indices of burn severity are now commonly used by researchers and fire managers to assess post-fire effects, but their relationship to field measurements of burn severity has not been evaluated in all ecosystems. In order to develop a geospatial atlas of burn severity for a 25 year period (1984-2008) in the northern Cascade Range, of Washington, USA, the accuracy of two remotely sensed indices of burn severity, the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and the Relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR), was assessed using field data from 639 plots located across four fires. In the process of comparing the two indexes, two methods of assessing field-based burn severity were compared: the Composite Burn Index (CBI) (Key and Benson 2006) and a newer version of the CBI that weighs severity scores by percentage cover (De Santis and Chuvieco 2009). The new weighted version of the CBI performed worse than the original unweighted version. Three methods of sub-sampling dNBR and RdNBR pixel values at field plot locations were compared, and bilinear interpolation, which uses
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