• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.195-203
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• 2008

Burn severity is an important role for rehabilitation of burned forest area. This factor led to the pilot study to determine if high resolution IKONOS images could be used to classify and delinenate the bum severity over burned areas of Samchock Fire and Cheongyang-Yesan Fire. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: 1. The modified Normalized Bum Ratio (NBR) for IKONOS imagery can be evaluated using burn severity mapping. 2. IKONOS-derived NBR imagery could provide fire scar and detail mapping of burned areas at Samchock fire and Cheongyang-Yesan Burns.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1299-1308
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• 2023

Forest fires are becoming more frequent and larger around the world due to climate change. Remote sensing such as satellite images can be used as an alternative or assistance data because it reduces various difficulties of field survey. Forest burn severity (differenced normalized burn ratio, dNBR) is calculated through the difference in normalized burn ratio (NBR) before and after a forest fire. The images used in the NBR formula are based on Landsat's near-infrared (NIR) and short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) bands. South Korea's satellite images don't have a SWIR band. So domestic studies related to forest burn severity calculated dNBR using overseas images or indirectly using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) using South Korea's satellite images. Therefore, in this study, dNBR was calculated by substituting the mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) band of Kompsat-3A (K3A) instead of the SWIR band in the NBR formula. The results were compared with the dNBR results obtained through Landsat which is the standard for dNBR formula. As a result, it was shown that dNBR using K3A's MWIR band has a wider range of values and can be expressed in more detail than dNBR using Landsat's SWIR band. Therefore, it is considered that K3A images will be highly useful in surveying burn areas and severity affected by forest fires. In addition, this study used the K3A's MWIR band images degraded to 30 m. It is considered that much better results will be obtained if a higher-resolution MWIR band is used.

• Journal of The Geomorphological Association of Korea
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.83-99
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• 2021

Burn severity analysis using satellite imagery has high capabilities for research and management in inaccessible areas. We extracted the forest fire area of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) in the western Imjin Estuary which is restricted to access due to the confrontation between South and North Korea. Then we analyzed the forest fire severity and recoverability using atmospheric corrected Surface Reflectance Level-2 data collected from Landsat-8 OLI (Operational Land Imagery) / TIRS (Thermal Infrared Sensor). Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), differenced NBR (dNBR), and Relative dNBR (RdNBR) were analyzed based on changes in the spectral pattern of satellite images to estimate burn severity area and intensity. Also, we evaluated the recoverability after a forest fire using a land cover map which is constructed from the NBR, dNBR, and RdNBR analyzed results. The results of dNBR and RdNBR analysis for the six years (during May 30, 2014 - May 30, 2020) showed that the intensity of monthly burn severity was affected by seasonal changes after the outbreak and the intensity of annual burn severity gradually decreased after the fire events. The regrowth of vegetation was detected in most of the affected areas for three years (until May 2020) after the forest fire reoccurred in May 2017. The monthly recoverability (from April 2014 to December 2015) of forests and grass fields was increased and decreased per month depending on the vegetation growth rate of each season. In the case of annual recoverability, the growth of forest and grass field was reset caused by the recurrence of a forest fire in 2017, then gradually recovered with grass fields from 2017 to 2020. We confirmed that remote sensing was effectively applied to research of the burn severity and recoverability in the DMZ. This study would also provide implications for the management and construction statistics database of the forest fire in the DMZ.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.80-92
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• 2007

Forest fire is the dominant large-scale disturbance mechanism in the Korean temperate forest, and it strongly influences forest structure and function. Moreover burn severity incorporates both short- and long-term post-fire effects on the local and regional environment. Burn severity is defined by the degree to which an ecosystem has changed owing to the fire. Vegetation rehabilitation may specifically vary according to burn severity after fire. To understand burn severity and process of vegetation rehabilitation at the damaged area after large-fire is required a lot of man powers and budgets. However the analysis of burn severity in the forest area using satellite imagery can acquire rapidly information and more objective results remotely in the large-fire area. Space and airbone sensors have been used to map area burned, assess characteristics of active fires, and characterize post-fire ecological effects. For classifying fire damaged area and analyzing burn severity of Samcheok fire area occurred in 2000, Cheongyang fire in 2002, and Yangyang fire in 2005 we utilized Normalized Burn Ratio(NBR) technique. The NBR is temporally differenced between pre- and post-fire datasets to determine the extent and degree of change detected from burning. In this paper we use pre- and post-fire imagery from the Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery to compute the NBR and evaluate large-scale patterns of burn severity at 30m spatial resolution. 65% in the Samcheok fire area, 91% in the Cheongyang fire area and 65% in the Yangyang fire area were corresponded to burn severity class above 'High'. Therefore the use of a remotely sensed Differenced Normalized Burn Ratio(${\Delta}NBR$) by RS and GIS allows for the burn severity to be quantified spatially by mapping damaged domain and burn severity across large-fire area.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.5_2
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• pp.765-779
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• 2022

This study evaluates the accuracy in identifying the burned area in South Korea using multi-temporal data from Sentinel-2 MSI and Landsat 8/9 OLI. Spectral indices such as the Difference Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR), Relative Difference Normalized Burn Ratio (RdNBR), and Burned Area Index (BAI) were used to identify the burned area in the March 2022 forest fire in Uljin. Based on the results of six indices, the accuracy to detect the burned area was assessed for four satellites using Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9, respectively. Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9 produce images every 16 and 10 days, respectively, although it is difficult to acquire clear images due to clouds. Furthermore, using images taken before and after a forest fire to examine the burned area results in a rapid shift because vegetation growth in South Korea began in April, making it difficult to detect. Because Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8/9 images from February to May are based on the same date, this study is able to compare the indices with a relatively high detection accuracy and gets over the temporal resolution limitation. The results of this study are expected to be applied in the development of new indices to detect burned areas and indices that are optimized to detect South Korean forest fires.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.231-237
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• 2007

To monitor process of vegetation rehabilitation at the damaged area after large-fire is required a lot of manpowers and budgets. However the analysis of vegetation recovery using satellite imagery can be obtaining rapid and objective result remotely in the large damaged area. Space and airbone sensors have been used to map area burned, assess characteristics of active fires, and characterize post-fire ecological effects. Burn severity incorporates both short- and long-term post-fire effects on the local and regional environment. Burn severity is defined by the degree to which an ecosystem has changed owing to the fire. To classify fire damaged area and analyze burn severity of Samcheok fire area occurred in 2000, Cheongyang fire 2002, and Yangyang fire 2005 was utilized Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery. Therefore the objective of the present paper is to quantitatively classify fire damaged area and analyze burn severity using normalized burn index(NBR) of pre- and post-fire's Landsat satellite imagery.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.85-94
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• 2009

This paper presents the capability to use QuickBird imagery for effects of forest disturbance in Okgye burned area. Particular attention of this paper deals with the NBR-derived mapping burn severity on QuickBird imagery to locate reliable rehabilitation(namely, secondary succession) over postfire surface. Comparisons of the mapping forest disturbance derived from QuickBird NBR data and the mapping burn severity derived from Landsat ${\Delta}NBR$ data show substantial agreement (KHAT value =0.7886). The method calculated from the correlation between QuickBird wetness and Landsat ETM+ band7 may have application to forest harvest disturbance.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.6_2
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• pp.1107-1115
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• 2019

Satellite data play a major role in supporting knowledge about forest fire by delivering rapid information to map areas damaged. This study, we used 7 Sentinel-2A images to detect change area in forests of Sokcho on April 4, 2019. The process of classify forest fire severity used 7 levels from Sentinel-2A dNBR(differenced Normalized Burn Ratio). In the process of classifying forest fire damage areas, the study selected three areas with high regrowth of vegetation level and conducted a detailed spatial analysis of the areas concerned. The results of dNBR analysis, regrowth of coniferous forest was greater than broad-leaf forest, but NDVI showed the lowest level of vegetation. This is the error of dNBR classification of dNBR. The results of dNBR time series, an area of forest fire damage decreased to a large extent between April 20th and May 3rd. This is an example of the regrowth by developing rare-plants and recovering broad-leaf plants vegetation. The results showed that change area was detected through the change detection of danage area by forest category and the classification errors of the coniferous forest were reached through the comparison of NDVI and dNBR. Therefore, the need to improve the precision Korean forest fire damage rating table accompanied by field investigations was suggested during the image classification process through dNBR.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.517-534
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• 2019

In abrupt fire disturbances, high quality images suitable for wildfire damage assessment can be difficult to acquire. Quantifying wildfire burn area and severity are essential measures for quick short-term disaster response and efficient long-term disaster restoration. Planetscope (PS) imagery offers 3 m spatial and daily temporal resolution, which can overcome the spatio-temporal resolution tradeoff of conventional satellites, albeit at the cost of spectral resolution. This study investigated the potential of augmenting PS imagery by integrating the spectral information from Sentinel-2 (S2) differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) to PS differenced Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (dNDVI) using histogram matching,specifically for wildfire burn area and severity assessment of the Okgye wildfire which occurred on April 4th, 2019. Due to the difficulty in acquiring reference data, the results of the study were compared to the wildfire burn area reported by Ministry of the Interior and Safety. The burn area estimates from this study demonstrated that the histogram-matched (HM) PS dNDVI image produced more accurate burn area estimates and more descriptive burn severity intervals in contrast to conventional methods using S2. The HM PS dNDVI image returned an error of only 0.691% whereas the S2 dNDVI and dNBR images overestimated the wildfire burn area by 5.32% and 106%, respectively. These improvements using PS were largely due to the higher spatial resolution, allowing for the detection of sparsely distributed patches of land and narrow roads, which were indistinguishable using S2 dNBR. In addition, the integration of spectral information from S2 in the PS image resolved saturation effects in areas of low and high burn severity.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.38 no.6_3
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• pp.1861-1869
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• 2022

Recent climate change can increase the frequency and damage of wildfires worldwide. It can also lead to the deterioration of the forest ecosystem and increase casualties and economic loss. Satellite-based indices for forest damage can facilitate an objective and rapid examination of burned areas and help analyze inaccessible places like North Korea. In this letter, we conducted a detection of burned areas in North Korea using the traditional Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR), the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) to represent vegetation vitality, and the Fire Burn Index (FBI) and Forest Withering Index (FWI) that were recently developed. Also, we suggested a strategy for the satellite-based detection of burned areas in the Korean Peninsula as a result of comparing the four indices. Future work requires the examination of small-size wildfires and the applicability of deep learning technologies.