Spectral vegetation indices for detection of burned areas

Abstract

The use of remote sensing for the mapping and discrimination of forest fires or burned areas is a key tool for monitoring, prevention and mainly for recovery and organization of pre and post-fire areas, which has proven to be an efficient and essential tool to perform these types of tasks. Numerous remote sensing techniques have been designed for mapping burned areas, highlighting the use and application of vegetation indexes, which have allowed advances in the study and understanding of the spatial and temporal behavior of plant covering. These techniques open up more possibilities to continue with research and new applications in different areas, especially related to the study of terrestrial ecosystems, which allows greater access to information (greater openness of public and private entities). The objective of this article is to define, from the explanations of certain authors, four of the vegetation spectral indexes most commonly used for mapping burned areas: normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized burned ratio (NBR), global environmental monitoring index (GEMI) and mid-infrared burned index (MIRBI).