Alfonso Fernandez-manso

University of Leon | UNILEON · Department of Engineering and Agricultural Sciences

Background Fire behaviour assessments of past wildfire events have major implications for anticipating post-fire ecosystem responses and fuel treatments to mitigate extreme fire behaviour of subsequent wildfires. Aims This study evaluates for the first time the potential of remote sensing techniques to provide explicit estimates of fire type (surfa...

Fire has played a crucial role in shaping Earth's landscapes for millions of years and has been used as a cultural tool for human development for millennia. However, changing fire regimes driven by global change drivers and human influences are reshaping landscapes and leading to more severe wildfires, with significant socioeconomic and environment...

Wildfires represent a significant threat to both ecosystems and human assets in Mediterranean countries, where fire occurrence is frequent and often devastating. Accurate assessments of the initial fire severity are required for management and mitigation efforts of the negative impacts of fire. Evapotranspiration (ET) is a crucial hydrological proc...

Spectral mixture analysis of satellite images, such as MESMA (multiple endmember spectral mixtures analysis), can be used to obtain fraction images in which the abundance of each land occupation class is represented at the pixel level, which is crucial for the analysis of heterogeneous landscapes in which types of habitats vary at fine spatial scal...

We aimed to compare the potential of physical-based models (radiative transfer and pixel unmixing models) for evaluating the short-term resilience to fire of several shrubland communities as a function of their regenerative strategy and burn severity. The study site was located within the perimeter of a wildfire that occurred in summer 2017 in the...

Background The characterization of surface and canopy fuel loadings in fire-prone pine ecosystems is critical for understanding fire behavior and anticipating the most harmful ecological effects of fire. Nevertheless, the joint consideration of both overstory and understory strata in burn severity assessments is often dismissed. The aim of this wor...

O período entre 2018 e 2022 mostrou-nos que o problema dos incêndios à escala global não está a diminuir, antes pelo contrário. Parece que as consequências das alterações climáticas já estão a afectar a ocorrência de incêndios florestais em várias partes do Mundo, de uma forma que só esperaríamos que acontecesse vários anos mais tarde. Em muitos pa...

Current predictions of global change effects in the Mediterranean Basin include an increase in the number, severity and recurrence of wildfires that will affect post-fire recovery of forest ecosystems, altering the provision of public goods and services on which many local populations depend. Mediterranean pine forests have been greatly affected by...

Heterogeneous and patchy landscapes where vegetation and abiotic factors vary at small spatial scale (fine-grained landscapes) represent a challenge for habitat diversity mapping using remote sensing imagery. In this context, techniques of spectral mixture analysis may have an advantage over traditional methods of land cover classification because...

Severe fires associated to climate change and land cover changes are becoming more frequent in Mediterranean Europe. The influence of environmental drivers on fire severity, especially under different environmental conditions is still not fully understood. In this study we aim to determine the main environmental variables that control fire severity...

Successful post-fire management depends on accurate burn severity maps that are increasingly derived from satellite data, replacing field-based estimates. Post-fire vegetation and soil changes, besides modifying the reflected and emitted radiation recorded by sensors onboard satellites, strongly alters water balance in the fire affected area. While...

Prescribed fires have been applied in many countries as a useful management tool to prevent large forest fires. Knowledge on burn severity is of great interest for predicting post-fire evolution in such burned areas and, therefore, for evaluating the efficacy of this type of action. In this research work, the severity of two prescribed fires that o...

Forest managers rely on accurate burn severity estimates to evaluate post-fire damage and to establish revegetation policies. Burn severity estimates based on reflective data acquired from sensors onboard satellites are increasingly complementing field-based ones. However, fire not only induces changes in reflected and emitted radiation measured by...

Southern European countries, particularly Spain, are greatly affected by forest fires each year. Quantification of burned area is essential to assess wildfire consequences (both ecological and socioeconomic) and to support decision making in land management. Our study proposed a new synergetic approach based on hotspots and reflectance data to map...

A new methodology combining 2 × 2 cross-diffusion systems of nonlinear partial differential equations (CDS) with classical image classification procedures is proposed in the present paper. Such a kind of mathematical models (CDS) have been theoretically studied in previous works in the context of image processing, however here they are tested and s...

Our study explores the relationship between land surface albedo (LSA) changes and burn severity, checking whether the LSA is an indicator of burn severity, in a large forest fire (117.75 km2, Spain). The LSA was obtained from Landsat data. In particular, we used an immediately-after-fire scene, a year-after-fire scene and a pre-fire one. The burn s...

All ecosystems and in particular ecosystems in Mediterranean climates are affected by fires. Knowledge of the drivers that most influence burn severity patterns as well an accurate map of post-fire effects are key tools for forest managers in order to plan an adequate post-fire response. Remote sensing data are becoming an indispensable instrument...

Forest managers demand reliable tools to evaluate post-fire vegetation and soil damage. In this study, we quantify wildfire damage to vegetation and soil based on the analysis of burn severity, using multitemporal and multispectral satellite data and species distribution models, particularly maximum entropy (MaxEnt). We studied a mega-wildfire (900...

The development of improved spatial and spectral resolution sensors provides new opportunities to assess burn severity more accurately. This study evaluates the ability of remote sensing indices derived from three remote sensing sensors (i.e., Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS, Sentinel-2 MSI and Deimos-1 SLIM-6-22) to assess burn severity (site, vegetation and s...

The increasing occurrence of large and severe fires in Mediterranean forest ecosystems produces major ecological and socio-economic damage. In this study, we aim to identify the main environmental factors driving fire severity in extreme fire events in Pinus fire prone ecosystems, providing management recommendations for reducing fire effects. The...

This study analyses the suitability of remote sensing data from different sources (Landsat 7 ETM+, MODIS and Meteosat) in evaluating the effect of fuel conditions on fire severity, using a megafire (11891ha) that occurred in a Mediterranean pine forest ecosystem (NW Spain) between 19 and 22August 2012. Fire severity was measured via the delta Norma...

We analysed the relationship between burn severity indicators, from remote sensing and field observations, and soil properties after a wildfire in a fire-prone Mediterranean ecosystem. Our study area was a large wildfire in a Pinus pinaster forest. Burn severity from remote sensing was identified by studying immediate post-fire Land Surface Tempera...

Forest fires are main drivers of landscape patterns that impact on ecosystems depending, among other factors, on fire regime. In the Mediterranean Basin, these disturbances are becoming larger and more recurrent due to global change, with fire recurrence threatening landscape recovery capacity. When recurrence is high, seeder species may show less...

Fire is one of the most importan! disturbance processes in Pinus fo rest ecosystems in the Mcditcrrancan Basin. These ecosystems differ markedly in thci r response to this disturbance. They rely on climatic conditions in the arca, fire regime and biological traits of the vegetation. Thus, understanding the influence of climatic conditions and fire...

We aimed to analyze the relationship between fire regime attributes and the post-fire greenness recovery of fire-prone pine ecosystems over the short (2-year) and medium (5-year) term after a large wildfire, using both a single and a combined fire regime attribute approach. We characterized the spatial (fire size), temporal (number of fires, fire r...

Multispectral imagery is a widely used source of information to address post-fire ecosystem management. The aim of this study is to evaluate the ability of remotely sensed indices derived from Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS to assess initial burn severity (overall, on vegetation and on soil) in fire-prone pine forests along the Mediterranean-Transition-Oceanic...

Nowadays Earth observation satellites, in particular Landsat, provide a valuable help to forest managers in post-fire operations; being the base of post-fire damage maps that enable to analyze fire impacts and to develop vegetation recovery plans. Sentinel-2A MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) records data in similar spectral wavelengths that Landsat 8...

p>In Mediterranean territories, with their characteristic climate that implies long periods of drought and rains often concentrated in torrential episodes, forest managers are faced with a series of decisions that can be urgent after a wildfire, some of them strongly correlated with the degree of damage caused by fire. In this sense, the object of...

Resumen: El proyecto RS-EducA ha sido desarrollado para servir como una herramienta educacional en Teledetección que cubra el vacío existente en lengua española. Este proyecto tiene tres importantes componentes: a) software de uso sencillo, b) materiales educativos que fomentan el autoaprendizaje, y c) una plataforma educacional (www.rs-educa.org)....

Resumen: Los incendios forestales producen numerosas pérdidas (económicas, medioambientales, y en ocasiones también de vidas humanas) en los ecosistemas mediterráneos europeos. Los mapas de daños ocasionados por incendios forestales basados en imágenes de satélite están demostrando ser una herramienta útil para la gestión forestal post-incendio. A...

La utilización del bosque como espacio y tiempo para la creación y exposición de arte contemporáneo ha sido desarrollada ampliamente en países como EEUU o Gran Bretaña. Estas experiencias, integradas genéricamente dentro del movimiento artístico denominado Land Art (woodland Art) consiguen añadir nuevos valores al bosque: culturales, estéticos, eco...

El término “Patrimonio Árbol”, Tree Heritage en lengua inglesa, no ha sido utilizado en el estado español y sin embargo, como se demostrará en este trabajo tiene importancias diferenciales con otros tipos de patrimonio. El “Patrimonio Árbol” como idea abarca a la vez del patrimonio natural, cultural e histórico. El concepto “Patrimonio Árbol”, nos...

El turismo es la primera actividad económica a nivel mundial. De los múltiples usos forestales, con mucho, la mayor contribución económica al Producto Interior Bruto (PIB) en países como EEUU o Nueva Zelanda es obtiene a través del turismo. Esta actividad vinculada a diferentes actividades recreativas actúa de forma transversal en todo el tejido ec...

Los Vehículo Aéreo No-Tripulados (VANTs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicules, UAVs) son una ayuda en la prevención, detección, y extinción de incendios forestales. Estamos convencidos de su utilidad también en el posterior análisis de daños ocasionados por el fuego, a pesar de que no hemos localizado ningún estudio científico que lo demuestre. Por este motiv...

Resumen La capacidad de regeneración después de un incendio forestal determina en gran medida la variabilidad espacial y temporal del paisaje vegetal de los ecosistemas mediterráneos. El objetivo del presente trabajo ha sido modelizar la evolución post-incendio de los distintos niveles de severidad y cuantificar la resiliencia medida como tiempo de...

Utilización de Vehículo Aéreo no Tripulado (VANT) en el estudio de los niveles de severidad por chancro del castaño en el noroeste de España Resumen: El conocimiento de la incidencia y gravedad de la enfermedad provocada por el hongo Cryphonectria parasitica (Murrill) M.E. Barr es esencial para el establecimiento de un plan de control y gestión de...

Forest fires are incidents of great importance in Mediterranean environments. Landsat data have proven to be suitable for evaluating post-fire vegetation damage and determining different levels of burn severity, which is crucial for planning post-fire rehabilitation. This study assessed the utility of combined Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture An...

An application of fractional calculus related to filtering and remote sensing is here shown. Since several inputs are commonly used to perform an accurate estimation of sensed areas, a fractional calculus based model allows to tune easily the filtering for every single input. In fact, the filtering is tuned by means of the viscosity parameters (ord...

Fires are one of the main causes of environmental alteration in Mediterranean forest ecosystems. Albedo varies and evolves seasonally based on solar illumination. It is greatly influenced by changes on vegetation: vegetation growth, cutting/planting forests or forest fires. This work analyzes albedo variations due to a large forest fire that occurr...

Fires are a yearly recurring phenomenon in Mediterranean forest ecosystems. Accurate classification of burn severity is fundamental for the rehabilitation planning of affected areas. This work shows how conventional remote sensing methods for burn severity assessment may be improved by using land surface emissivity (LSE) to enhance standard spectra...

Short title: Analysis of a Nelder trial applied to the management of Pinus radiata Profitability of plantations, especially when dealing with exotic species, requires knowledge of how wood properties and growth can be manipulated by silvicultural management. The interactive effects of initial stand density and genotype on stiffness, stem form, bran...

A Chinese-Brazilian Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) and an Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) scenes coupled with ancillary georeferenced data and field survey were employed to examine the potential of the remote sensing data in stand basal area, volume and aboveground biomass assessment over large areas of Pin...

Satellite imagery is formed by finite digital numbers representing a specific location of ground surface in which each matrix element is denominated as a picture element or pixel. The pixels represent the sensor measurements of spectral radiance. The radiance recorded in the satellite images is then an integrated sum of the radiances of all targets...

Forest fires throughout the world result in tree mortality that can cause substantial timber and carbon losses. There is a critical need to map the areas burned by such fires to guide forest management decisions. Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imagery provides inexpensive and frequent coverage over large areas, faci...

Important issues such as the prediction of drought, fire risk and forest disease are based on analysis of forest vegetation response. A method of forecasting the short-term response of forest vegetation on the basis of an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analysis was designed in this study. We used 10-day maximum value composite (MV...

Forest fires are an important problem in Brazil. Rapid and accurate mapping of burned area is essential to manage forestry area. Remote sensing is emerging as a tool to map burned areas with enough accuracy in a reasonable period of time. This paper presents a method to mapping burned areas from satellite images. The study area was the Parque das E...

An image mining method was applied to Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data to estimate the area burned by forest fires occurring in Galicia (Spain) between 4 August and 15 August 2006. Five different inputs were considered: post-fire near-infrared reflectance (NIR) band, post-fire Normalized Difference Vegetation Ind...

Territorial inequality between rural and urban areas has important repercussions within the social and environmental sustainability of the planet. These inequalities are extremely important in countries such as Spain, where intense urbanization processes have taken place in the last decades. Knowing this problem is a key to design and evaluate the...

This study shows an accurate and fast methodology in order to evaluate fire severity classes of large forest fires. A single Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper multispectral image was utilized with the aim of mapping fire severity classes (high, moderate and low) using a combined-approach based in a spectral mixing model and object-based image analys...