Characterization and mapping of fuel types for the Mediterranean ecosystems of Pollino National Park in southern Italy by using hyperspectral MIVIS data

The characterization and mapping of fuel types is one of the most important factors that should be taken into consideration for wildland fire prevention and prefire planning. This research aims to investigate the usefulness of hyperspectral data to recognize and map fuel types in order to ascertain how well remote sensing data can provide an exhaustive classification of fuel properties. For this purpose airborne hyperspectral Multispectral Infrared and Visible Imaging Spectrometer (MIVIS) data acquired in November 1998 have been analyzed for a test area of 60 km(2) selected inside Pollino National Park in the south of Italy. Fieldwork fuel-type recognitions, performed at the same time as remote sensing data acquisition, were used as a ground-truth dataset to assess the results obtained for the considered test area. The method comprised the following three steps: 1) adaptation of Prometheus fuel types for obtaining a standardization system useful for remotely sensed classification of fuel types and properties in the considered Mediterranean ecosystems; 2) model construction for the spectral characterization and mapping of fuel types based on a maximum likelihood ( ML) classification algorithm; and 3) accuracy assessment for the performance evaluation based on the comparison of MIVIS-based results with ground truth. Results from our analysis showed that the use of remotely sensed data at high spatial and spectral resolution provided a valuable characterization and mapping of fuel types being that the achieved classification accuracy was higher than 90%.