Linking Spatial Characteristics of Forest Structure and Burn Severity

산림 공간구조 특성과 산불 연소강도와의 관계에 관한 연구

Because fire has significant impacts on fauna and flora in forest ecosystems, as well as socioeconomic influences to local community, it has been an important field of study for decades. One of the most common ways to reduce fire risk is to enhance fire-resilience of forest through fuel treatments including thinning and prescribed burning. Since fuel treatment can't be practiced over all forested areas, appropriate and effective strategies are needed. The present study aims to look at the relationship between spatial characteristics of forest structure measured with landscape pattern metrics and burn severity to provide guidelines for effective fuel treatments. Samchuck fire was selected for the study, and 232 grids covering the study areas were generated, and the grid size was 1km. The burn severity is measured with dNBR derived from satellite imagery, and spatial characteristics of forest structure were measured using FRAGSTATS for both landscape and class levels for each 1km grid. The results of this study strongly indicated that heterogeneity in composition and configuration of forests may significantly reduce burn severity. By enhancing heterogeneity of forests, fuel treatments for fire-resilience forest could be more effective.