The California 208 fire season was particularly bad and this year isn’t projected to be any better. Multiband satellite imagery can be useful in assessing the spatial extent and amount of damage to vegetation from fire as well as measure vegetation recovery. Since many imaging sensors on satellites measure wavelengths beyond the visual spectrum and include Near Infrared (NIR) and even thermal wavelengths their products can be used to address a wide range questions about processes and changes on Earth.
The County Fire burned an estimated 90,288 acres and began on June 30th, 2018. Although it wasn’t completely extinguished for 187 days it was mostly contained within a few weeks. This wildfire primarily burned remote woodlands and mountainous terrain and was located just east of Lake Berryessa in Napa and Yolo counties. Here I used Landsat 8 imagery to show the extent of the fire, the impact to vegetation and the beginning of recovery with imagery from before the fire, during the fire, immediately after the fire and the following spring. I used True Color visual spectrum (RGB) imagery, False Color using NIR imagery and Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which also utilizes the NIR wavelengths, to show changes in the vegetation through these time periods.
The True Color shows the visual spectrum while the False Color shows vegetation in red by using a NIR with visual red and green wavelengths.
The more intense red color can be thought of as denser vegetation or high growth since plants reflect the NIR wavelengths.
The NDVI image is shown in a red to blue spectrum with Red representing NDVI values that indicate healthy vegetation while dark blue represents NDVI values indicating no vegetation.
You can clearly see the new and recovering vegetation this spring as California had a relatively wet winter and spring. The center of the fire area remains relatively bare but will likely continue to recover until it eventually burns again.