RT Journal Article
T1 Estimating Fuel Loads and Structural Characteristics of Shrub Communities by Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning
A1 Alonso Rego, Cecilia
A1 Arellano Pérez, Stéfano
A1 Cabo, Carlos
A1 Ordóñez, Celestino
A1 Álvarez González, Juan Gabriel
A1 Díaz Varela, Ramón Alberto
A1 Ruiz González, Ana Daría
K1 Live/dead fuel fractions
K1 Shrub cover
K1 Shrub height
K1 Litter depth
K1 Simultaneous fitting
K1 Fuel load additivity
K1 Stand level equations
AB Forest fuel loads and structural characteristics strongly affect fire behavior, regulating the rate of spread, fireline intensity, and flame length. Accurate fuel characterization, including disaggregation of the fuel load by size classes, is therefore essential to obtain reliable predictions from fire behavior simulators and to support decision-making in fuel management and fire hazard prediction. A total of 55 sample plots of four of the main non-tree covered shrub communities in NW Spain were non-destructively sampled to estimate litter depth and shrub cover and height for species. Fuel loads were estimated from species-specific equations. Moreover, a single terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) scan was collected in each sample plot and features related to the vertical and horizontal distribution of the cloud points were calculated. Two alternative approaches for estimating size-disaggregated fuel loads and live/dead fractions from TLS data were compared: (i) a two-steps indirect estimation approach (IE) based on fitting three equations to estimate shrub height and cover and litter depth from TLS data and then use those estimates as inputs of the existing species-specific fuel load equations by size fractions based on these three variables; and (ii) a direct estimation approach (DE), consisting of fitting seven equations, one for each fuel fraction, to relate the fuel load estimates to TLS data. Overall, the direct approach produced more balanced goodness-of-fit statistics for the seven fractions considered jointly, suggesting that it performed better than the indirect approach, with equations explaining more than 80% of the observed variability for all species and fractions, except the litter loads
PB MDPI
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24033
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24033
LA eng
NO Alonso-Rego, C.; Arellano-Pérez, S.; Cabo, C.; Ordoñez, C.; Álvarez-González, J.G.; Díaz-Varela, R.A.; Ruiz-González, A.D. Estimating Fuel Loads and Structural Characteristics of Shrub Communities by Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 3704
NO This research was funded by the projects GEPRIF (RTA2014-00011-c06-04) and VIS4FIRE (RTA 2017-0042-C05-05) of the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness
DS Minerva
RD 1 may 2026