Retrospective analysis of two Northern California wild-land fires via Landsat five satellite imagery and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)

Copyright © 2013 Bennett Sall et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Wild-land fires are a dynamic and destructive force in natural ecosystems. In recent decades, fire disturbances have increased concerns and awareness over significant economic loss and landscape change. The focus of this research was to study two northern California wild-land fires: Butte Humboldt Complex and Butte Light-ning Complex of 2008 and assessment of vege-tation recovery after the fires via ground based measurements and utilization of Landsat 5 im-agery and analysis software to assess land-scape change. Multi-temporal and burn severit