Vegetation Regrowth Analysis After Wildfire Events. Preliminary Results in the Aspromonte National Park (Calabria, Italy)

In Mediterranean environment, wildfires can be considered an integral part of ecosystem dynamics, due to their recurrence and the areas affected. A way to assess the impact of wildfires on the ecosystems is the analysis of the dynamics leading to the vegetation recovery of the burnt areas. In this framework, geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS) techniques are playing an increasingly important role, especially due to the availability of free data and software. In this work we are presenting the first results of a multidisciplinary still ongoing research about wildfire detection and regrowth mapping inside the protected area of the Aspromonte National Park (southern Italy). Once obtained information about wildfires occurrence, Sentinel-2 multispectral images of interested areas have been acquired to build a time-series composed of pre- and post-fire images. For each image the normalized burnt ratio (NBR) and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) have been calculated. The difference between NBR values pre- and post-fire have (dNBR) have been used to detect and map burnt areas. Values of indices in the post-fire images have been used to map the vegetation recovery in burnt areas. The analyses highlighted 5589.40 ha of burnt areas with a total recovery after the first year of 3344.10 ha. The proposed method represents a useful tool for burnt areas detection and post-fire dynamics monitoring.