A semi-automatic methodology to detect fire scars in shrubs and evergreen forests with Landsat MSS time series

This paper presents a semi-automatic methodology for fire scars mapping fro m a long time series of remote sensing data. Approximately, a hundred MSS i mages from different Landsat satellites were employed over an area of 32 10 0 km(2) in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula. The analysed period was from 1975 to 1993. Results are a map series of fire history and frequencie s. Omission errors are 23% for burned areas greater than 200 ha while commi ssion errors are 8% for areas greater than 50 ha. Subsequent work based on the resultant fire scars will also help in describing fire regime and in mo nitoring post-fire regeneration dynamics.