A Proposed Method to Rank the Intensity of Boreal Forests Fires in Ontario Using Post-fire High-resolution Aerial Photographs

Book excerpt: Fire intensity is a crucial descriptor of fire behaviour that may also be an important determinant of many types of ecological dynamics. However, fire intensity has proven challenging to measure directly. Indirect estimates of fire intensity are often confounded with the ecological effects of the fire, precluding further study of the relationships between intensity and population or community dynamics. In this report, the authors describe a novel method for estimating the intensity of fires in the boreal forest of Ontario using high resolution imagery taken soon after fire. This method relies on an empirical relationship between the branch structure of fire-killed trees (crown fraction burned) and fire intensity rankings provided by the Canadian Forest Fire Behaviour Prediction System (FBP) and its field guide for fire managers. The results of the application of this method to 660 high resolution aerial photography sample plots, each 25 m in diameter, dispersed among 11 fires that occurred in the boreal forest of Ontario in 2005 are described.--Document.