Remotely sensing primary production recovery following bushfire

Abstract

Vegetation growth is the key process driving landscape dynamics and carbon flux. Fire disturbs gross primary productivity to varying degrees depending on fire effects and the ability of the landscape to absorb these. Simple remote sensing diagnosis can build a description of vegetation growth considering physiological drivers from the top down, which are related to fire disturbance through time. Analysis of these disturbances in terms of ecosystem processes at landscape scales are not common. This method used here produces results showing a near constant relationship between fire severity and vegetation type, and time to GPP recovery in a semi-arid shrub landscape. Other landscapes with structurally complex vegetation show a range of GPP values and recovery trajectories with time after fire. The balance of radiation and conductance model components’ response to fire disturbance needs to be analysed further. The work here highlights the opportunities in remote sensing available to analysis of landscape disturbance and the potential for integrating such fluctuation into landscape models Show more