Post-Fire Vegetation Recovery Monitoring using MODIS Time Series: A Case Study in California

Abstract: Human-caused forest fires have increased in magnitude and frequency, affecting global vegetation and requiring a re-evaluation of fire regimes. Changing fire regimes have led to reduced burned areas in fire- dependent ecosystems and increased areas in fire-independent ecosystems, resulting in changes in land cover and posing a threat to native plant communities. This study focuses on monitoring vegetation recovery after fires in California, USA, using the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from MODIS time series. The goal is to determine the full recovery time and half recovery time (HRT) after forest fires in year 2017 and analyze the influence of burn severity on three land cover classes in two different climate zones in California.Analyzes show that the "Closed Forest" land cover type exhibits the longest recovery period, followed by the "Open Forest" type and “Herbaceous/Shrub” type in both climate zones but no general connection between recovery time and climate zone was observed. It is found that burn severity degree affects HRT but not the full recovery time in both Mediterranean and Semi-arid climate zones. The study mainly highlights the variations in forest fire recovery patterns between land cover types, as well as differences observed between climate zones.