Red-Edge Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI705) from Sentinel-2 imagery to assess post-fire regeneration

Obtaining post-fire information from a burnt region is of paramount importance in applications such as examining the disturbance of natural ecosystems and in providing crucial information to local authorities that have control on policymaking. This study uses freely available data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-2 satellite to create a Red-Edge Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI705) and combines the resulting layer with 30 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to assess topographical parameters (ie. slope steepness and aspect) which may have influenced the revegetation process. Additionally, weather data is combined with the aforementioned datasets to study the revegetation dynamics. A fire event which occurred in June 2016 in Evrychou, Cyprus, was chosen, as it was one of the largest fire events in the island and happened when the Sentinel-2 was already operational, hence a period of time spanning 14 months has been studied. The results have indicated an inconsistent NDVI705 change throughout the period. However, a significant improvement in NDVI705 values was observed in the months of spring 2017. The improvement in vegetation health was mostly observed on north-facing and less-steep slopes, something which corresponds with previous studies in northern-hemisphere Mediterranean climates. The results have also highlighted the ability to conduct a rapid and cost-effective post-fire assessment which can be scaled up or down depending on the fire size and which can be applied to any other environment where post-fire management is required.