Integrating teledetection and economic tools in the evaluation of wildfires impacts. The Alhama De Almería fire (Spain) case
| Authors: | Juan Ramón Molina, Francisco Rodríguez y Silva, Laura Ruiz |
| Year: | 2019 |
| Type: | General Technical Report |
| Station: | Pacific Southwest Research Station |
| Source: | Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-261 (English). Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: 132-144. |
Abstract
Valuation of natural resources requires a multifunctional vision incorporating market and nonmarket values like environmental services and landscape goods. Though widely used in forest firest analysis, teledetection has never been used in the economic valuation of forest fires damages. Application of this tool in the valuation of forest fires damages provides a versatile tool with many benefits. For example, it allows identification and valuation of large forest fires inexpensively compare to on the ground monitoring by providing periodic information of vegetation post-fire behavior.
Using Landsat 8 satellite images and the economic procedure in Visual SEVEIF we provide an economic valuation of the damages caused by the Alhama de Almeria fire (3,260 ha). The satellite images are an important source of georeferenced information and can be used to determine the resource net-value-change based on fire intensity by classifying the vegetation indexes as resource depreciation rates. For the Alhama de Almeria fire the dNBR index provides a more robust representation of fire severity than RdNBR because of the boosting effect caused by the pre-fire NBR due to the areas scant vegetation, low precipitation and intense sun light. The economic valuation of the damages caused by this fire was estimated at 656,981 € or 201.53 €/ha. The most important resources in the valuation were landscape goods because of their closedness to the province capital. Over 57% of the total losses correspond to landscape goods and environmental services.