Investigating fire-induced behavioural trends in vegetation covers

The fire-induced variability in vegetation dynamics was analyzed by means of a fluctuation analysis applied to a time series of satellite SPOT-VEGETATION normalized difference of vegetation index (NDVI) data from 1998 to 2003. We used the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which allows capturing persistent behavior in nonstationary signals. We analyzed four vegetation sites, two affected and the other two not affected by fires. Our results point out that the persistence of vegetation dynamics is significantly increased by the occurrence of fires.