Monitoring the landscape stability of Mediterranean vegetation in relation to fire with a fractal algorithm

Mediterranean landscapes are characterized by a high stability to fire due to the rapid regeneration of the pre-existing spatial relation among the distinctive patches. This is manifested by a rapid vegetation regrowth after the fire. The post-fire dynamics of vegetation regrowth can be monitored using remotely sensed data. The aim of this paper is to introduce a method to quantitatively estimate the dynamics of post-fire recovery of Mediterranean landscapes based on a multitemporal analysis of the biomass local variability derived from remotely sensed data. The ability of this method to distinguish remotely sensed texture variations in biomass data made it appropriate to the monitoring of post-fire landscape structural changes in Mediterranean areas at a Landsat TM scale.