title: Quantifying biomass consumption and carbon release from the California Rim fire by integrating airborne LiDAR and Landsat OLI data.
abstract: Quantifying biomass consumption and carbon release is critical to understanding the role of fires in the carbon cycle and air quality. We present a methodology to estimate the biomass consumed and the carbon released by the California Rim fire by integrating postfire airborne LiDAR and multitemporal Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery. First, a support vector regression (SVR) model was trained to estimate the aboveground biomass (AGB) from LiDAR-derived metrics over the unburned area. The selected model estimated AGB with anR2of 0.82 and RMSE of 59.98 Mg/ha. Second, LiDAR-based biomass estimates were extrapolated to the entire area before and after the fire, using Landsat OLI reflectance bands, Normalized Difference Infrared Index, and the elevation derived from LiDAR data. The extrapolation was performed using SVR models that resulted inR2of 0.73 and 0.79 and RMSE of 87.18 (Mg/ha) and 75.43 (Mg/ha) for the postfire and prefire images, respectively. After removing bias from the AGB extrapolations using a linear relationship between estimated and observed values, we estimated the biomass consumption from postfire LiDAR and prefire Landsat maps to be 6.58 ± 0.03 Tg (1012g), which translate into 12.06 ± 0.06 Tg CO2ereleased to the atmosphere, equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.57 million cars.
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena California USA; Centre for Landscape and Climate Research University of Leicester Leicester UK.
authors.forename: Mariano
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-6260-5791
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology Pasadena California USA.
authors.forename: Sassan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saatchi
authors.affiliation: Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing University of California Davis California USA.
authors.forename: Angeles
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Casas
authors.affiliation: Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing University of California Davis California USA.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Koltunov
authors.affiliation: Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing University of California Davis California USA.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ustin
authors.affiliation: Region 5 Remote Sensing Lab, McClellan USDA Forest Service Vallejo California USA.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ramirez
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science University of Seville Seville Spain.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1300-4647
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia-Gutierrez
authors.affiliation: Centre for Landscape and Climate Research University of Leicester Leicester UK; National Centre for Earth Observation University of Leicester Leicester UK.
authors.forename: Heiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Balzter
keywords: Landsat OLI; biomass consumption; carbon emissions; data integration; lidar; megafires