A Comparison of Fine and Coarse Resolution Remote Sensing Platforms for Post Fire Severity

Abstract

This study compares Landsat 8 dNBR with Planet dNDVI for burn severity measurement. The sensors were compared to ground reference data using the Composite Burn Index (CBI) and a radiospectrometer. CBI data was collected with 21 field plots from a fire on ranch land in Llano, Texas in the Summer of 2018. dNBR based on Landsat 8 produced higher r2 values (0.742) than dNDVI based on Planet imagery (0.324). Planet imagery at ~3m spatial resolution has finer details of the landscape that can help land managers, fire departments, and landowners to rehabilitate the landscape, but it lacks an MIR band, which explains its lower correlation values. The Landsat system provides better results spectrally, but Planet images can provide finer detail of the landscape and with a more flexible time/date range.