Discriminating fluctuation dynamics in burned and unburned vegetational covers

Fluctuation dynamics of time series of satellite SPOT-VEGETATION Normalized Difference of Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from 1998 to 2003 were analyzed to discriminate fire-induced variability in the vegetational dynamics of shrub-land in southern Italy. We used detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which permits the detection of persistent properties in nonstationary signal fluctuations. We analyzed two shrub-land covers, one in "healthy conditions" (fire-unaffected) and the other in "ill conditions" (fire-affected). Our findings suggest that fires play an important role in the temporal evolution of the shrub-land, increasing the persistence of the vegetation dynamics.