Fire-induced variability in satellite SPOT-VGT NDVI vegetational data

Is it possible to quantitatively characterize the dynamic variability induced by fires on vegetation? To answer this question, we performed a fluctuation analysis of time series of satellite SPOT-VEGETATION Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1998 to 2003 in order to discriminate fire-induced variability in the vegetation dynamics of forests in southern Italy. We used the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), which permits the detection of persistent properties in non-stationary signal fluctuations. We analysed two forest sites, one fire-unaffected and the other fire-affected. Our findings suggest that fires play an important role in the temporal evolution of forests, increasing the persistence of the vegetation dynamics.