Published works

Fuel reduction burns are commonly used in fire-prone forests to reduce the risk of wildfire and increase ecosystem resilience. As such producing quantified assessments of fire-induced change is important to understanding the success of the intervention. Remote sensing has also been employed for assessing fuel hazard and fire severity. Satellite, airborne and UAV remote sensing, for example, have shown potential for assessing the effects of large wildfires and fuel hazard in areas of open canopy. Fuel reduction burns, however, often take place under dense canopy and result in little or no change to the canopy cover. As such terrestrial techniques are needed to quantify the efficacy of these burns.

This study presents a case study on the use of image based point clouds, captured terrestrially following the fuels3D methodology outlined in Wallace et al. (2016), for describing the change in fuel structure induced by a low intensity fuel reduction burn. The specific objectives of this study were to evaluate whether fuel structure maps produced from fuels3D point clouds are sensitive to the changes that occur during a low intensity fuel reduction burn, and how these changes may be quantified.