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A New Metric For Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio, Sean A. Parks, Gregory K. Dillon, Carol Miller
A New Metric For Quantifying Burn Severity: The Relativized Burn Ratio, Sean A. Parks, Gregory K. Dillon, Carol Miller
USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications
Satellite-inferred burn severity data have become increasingly popular over the last decade for management and research purposes. These data typically quantify spectral change between pre-and post-fire satellite images (usually Landsat). There is an active debate regarding which of the two main equations, the delta normalized burn ratio (dNBR) and its relativized form (RdNBR), is most suitable for quantifying burn severity; each has its critics. In this study, we propose and evaluate a new Landsat-based burn severity metric, the relativized burn ratio (RBR), that provides an alternative to dNBR and RdNBR. For 18 fires in the western US, we compared the …