Modelling and mapping burn severity of prescribed and wildfires across the southeastern United States (2000-2022)

The southeastern United States (‘Southeast’) experiences high levels of fire activity, but the preponderance of small and prescribed fires means that existing burn severity products are incomplete across the region.

We developed and applied a burn severity model across the Southeast to enhance our understanding of regional burn severity patterns.

We used Composite Burn Index (CBI) plot data from across the conterminous US (CONUS) to train a gradient-boosted decision tree model. The model was optimised for the Southeast and applied to the annual Landsat Burned Area product for 2000–2022 across the region.

The burn severity model had a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.48 (R² = 0.70) and 0.50 (R² = 0.37) for the CONUS and Southeast, respectively. The Southeast, relative to CONUS, had lower mean absolute residuals in low and moderate burn severity categories. Burn severity was consistently lower in areas affected by prescribed burns relative to wildfires.

Although regional performance was limited by a lack of high burn severity CBI plots, the burn severity dataset demonstrated patterns consistent with low-severity, frequent fire regimes characteristic of Southeastern ecosystems.

More complete data on burn severity will enhance regional management of fire-dependent ecosystems and improve estimates of fuels and fire emissions.