Modelling the impact of wildfire on spectral reflectance

This paper presents a method to extract information on the impact of wildfire on vegetation canopies. A simple linear model is proposed with a `generic´ spectral model of the impacts of wildfire on vegetation canopies. This allows a term related to the projected proportion of a pixel affected by fire (fcc) to be estimated from measurements of pre- and post-fire spectral reflectance. The properties of fcc are investigated using a hybrid radiative transfer model to simulate the impacts of wildfire in a multi-layered canopy. Spectral sampling from MODIS is assumed (7 bands). The fcc is confirmed to relate to the fractional area of a pixel affected by fire, although in multi-layer canopies it is modulated by a term dependent on the contrast between the pre-fire reflectance of areas affected by fire and those unaffected.