The effect of landscape pattern and vegetation cover types on the fire regime of a savanna in southern Mali

Abstract

Understanding the causes of specific fire regimes is critical for determining the long term impacts of fire on vegetation cover. Numerous studies using 30 m Landsat data find a relationship between fire timing and vegetation type, but this relationship has not been observed at broader scales. In West Africa land-cover patterns are heterogeneous and patchy at the landscape scale and annual fires often burn mosaic patterns. It is well documented that where fires are known to be small and fragmented, the commonly used coarse-resolution MODIS data cannot give accurate estimates of burned area. Moreover, their inability to capture the spatial pattern of land-cover types burned presents a mixed pixel problem, because vegetation and agricultural fields vary on a scale less than 500 m². To overcome these issues, this study uses medium-resolution Landsat data to map land-cover. Landscape ecological indices are used to observe spatial patterns at 500 m scale.