Postfire forest recovery
| Forest fires rage through the trees, especially in drought years when the vegetation is very dry and fires can easily start. The burned areas are soon covered in lodgepole pine seedlings that sprout from seeds released by the cones as a result of the forest fire. The images above show an area in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 (left), when fires swept through the park's forest, and in 1999 (right), 11 years after the fires. An actively burning wildfire appears as bright red on the 1988 image. If you look carefully, you can even see the smoke from the fire. By 1999, eleven years after the fire, the forest was beginning to grow back. Compare the two images to find spots that look red or pink on the left image, but green on the right image. These are the places where the seedlings are beginning to create a new forest. Bright green areas are meadows and grasslands. |
Credit: Kansas Applied Remote Sensing Program
For more info: http://www.kars.ukans.edu/forest