Impacts of burn severity on short-term postfire vegetation recovery, surface albedo, and land surface temperature in California ecoregions

Abstract

Wildfire burn severity has important implications for postfire vegetation recovery and boundary-layer climate. We used a collection of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) datasets to investigate the impact of burn severity (relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, RdNBR) on vegetation recovery (Enhanced Vegetation Index, EVI), albedo change, and land surface temperature in seven California ecoregions, including: Southern California Mountains (SCM), Southern California Coast (SCC), Central California Foothills (CCF), Klamath (K), Cascades (C), Eastern Cascades (EC), and Sierra Nevada (SN). A statewide MODIS-derived RdNBR dataset was used to analyze the impact of burn severity on the five-year postfire early-summer averages of each biophysical variable between the years 2003–2020. We found that prefire EVI values were largest, and prefire albedo and temperature were lowest in the K, C, EC, and SN ecoregions. Furthermore, the largest changes between prefire and first-year postfire biophysical response tended to occur in the moderate and high burn severity classes across all ecoregions. First-year postfire albedo decreased in the K, C, EC, and SN but increased in the SCM, SCC, and CCF ecoregions. The greatest decreases, but most rapid recovery, of EVI occurred after high severity fires in all ecoregions. After five-years post-fire, EVI and land surface temperature did not return to prefire levels in any burn severity class in any ecoregion.