J For Res (2005) 10:101111

DOI 10.1007/s10310-004-0106-y

The Japanese Forest Society and Springer-Verlag Tokyo 2005

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Muhamad Husni Idris Koichiro Kuraji Masakazu Suzuki

Evaluating vegetation recovery following large-scale forest fires in Borneo

and northeastern China using multi-temporal NOAA/AVHRR images

Received: August 18, 2003 / Accepted: July 4, 2004

Abstract This study evaluated whether a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), derived from 8-kmresolution National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) Pathfinder AVHRR (advanced very high resolution radiometer) land (PAL) data, is appropriate for monitoring recovery following large-scale forest fires. Recovery
processes were examined after fires on the island of Borneo
and in northeastern China in 1983 and 1987, respectively.
Based on pre- and post-fire NDVI differences (NDVId), six
damage classes were established. Post-fire changes in land
cover were monitored using (1) the average NDVI of all
pixels corresponding to each damage class (A-NDVI) and
(2) the ratio of a fire-affected A-NDVI to a non-fireaffected A-NDVI (QNDVI). Burn areas located by an
NDVId threshold value were similar to reported burn
areas. Both A-NDVI and QNDVI values signaled vegetation recovery, but the QNDVI gave much better results. For
both the 1983 Borneo and 1987 northeastern China fires,
QNDVI values dropped at the time of the fire and increased
for about 4 years afterwards, although a 4-year period is
obviously less than the time required for biomass recovery.
Trends at the two study sites diverged after this period,
however. The QNDVI values for multiple fire events in
Borneo (in 1983, 1987, 1991, 1997, and 1998) showed that
recovery times varied with the size of the burn area, but not
with the damage class of the same event, whereas the
severe-class QNDVI values for the fire in northeastern
China in 1987 were still lower than the control value 10
years after the fire.
Key words Forest fire NDVI Post-fire vegetation recovery Borneo Northeastern China

M.H. Idris (*) K. Kuraji M. Suzuki

Laboratory of Forest Hydrology and Erosion Control Engineering,
Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University
of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan
Tel.
81-3-5841-5214; Fax
81-3-5841-5464
e-mail: husni@fr.a.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Introduction
Fire plays a crucial role in vegetation dynamics. Besides
directly destroying part or all of the vegetative material, fire
can also alter environmental conditions. Biomass burning
contributes to the concentration of trace gases and particulate matter in the atmosphere (e.g., Davies and Unam
1999). Moreover, biomass burning and the removal of
vegetation by fire may change soil properties and soil
atmospheric interactions (Christensen and Muller 1975;
Tagawa et al. 1999; Neary et al. 1999; DeBano 2000;
Robichaud 2000). More serious environmental impacts can
be expected from large-scale fires, such as those in Borneo
in 1983 (Malingreau et al. 1985) and in northeastern China
in 1987 (Cahoon et al. 1994). The scale of the fire event, and
the degree of vegetation damage and environmental alteration, will influence post-fire vegetation performance and
recovery rates.
Fire usually destroys or depletes vegetation rapidly; fire
recovery, however, is a long-term process. Owing to the
wide spatial coverage and the frequency of observations,
remotely sensed data are effective for analyzing vegetation
recovery after a large-scale fire.
Vegetation monitoring using remotely sensed data is
usually conducted by means of vegetation indices, including
the widely used normalized difference vegetation index
(NDVI). The NDVI is sensitive to land cover percentages,
making it possible to detect fire-affected areas using this
index. As fire causes NDVI values to decrease, the difference between pre- and post-fire NDVI values (NDVId)
should be useful for identifying burned areas (Kasischke et
al. 1993; Kasischke and French 1995; Fernandez et al. 1997;
Salvador et al. 2000). To put it simply, a burned area can be
distinguished from an unburned area by comparing NDVId
values to a threshold value. Kasischke et al. (1993) developed a numerical threshold by visual analysis of NDVId,
while Fernandez et al. (1997) tried to minimize subjectivity
by proposing a threshold based on the NDVId average and
standard deviation. These studies confirmed the potential of
NDVI for rapid mapping of burned areas.

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Several studies have used NDVI data to evaluate postfire recovery processes (Malingreau et al. 1985; Viedma
et al. 1997; Daz-Delgado and Pons 2001). Viedma et al.
(1997) studied recovery rates according to the relationship
between the NDVI and temporal data. Daz-Delgado and
Pons (2001) proposed the QNDVI, an index of the ratio
between the mean NDVI of burned and unburned areas.
They used the QNDVI to evaluate post-fire recovery in
Catalonia, Spain, using a sequence of Landsat images. Generally, both the NDVI and the NDVI-derived index
(QNDVI) can be used to evaluate the recovery process.
The QNDVI has some advantages, insofar as it can reduce
temporal problems in NDVI data, and it has already
been successfully implemented. Few studies, however,
have evaluated how the QNDVI performs as a monitor
of recovery after large-scale fires in different climate
conditions.
To monitor long-term vegetation changes, remotely
sensed data should be collected and processed consistently.
The global time-series National Oceanic Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)/National Aeronautics Space
Administration (NASA) Pathfinder AVHRR (advanced
very-high-resolution radiometer) land (PAL) dataset meets
the above criteria. The dataset contains long-term data
(from 1981 to the present); the NDVI and associated
reflectance and surface temperature values have also been
consistently produced and distributed (James and Kalluri
1994; Smith et al. 1997). The PAL data have spatial resolutions of 8 km. Various studies have used the dataset for such
purposes as identifying land cover classifications (Liang
2001; DeFries et al. 1995), land cover change (Young and
Wang 2001), the growing season (Chen et al. 2000), and
surface water status (Troufleau and Sgaard 1998) on global
and continental scales.
This study used NOAA PAL data to derive QNDVI
values, which were then evaluated for use as a post-fire
recovery-monitoring tool. Recovery rates following largescale forest fires in two areas with different climates the
island of Borneo and northeastern Chinasoutheast Siberia
were examined. Massive forest fires devastated Borneo
and northeastern China in 1983 and 1987, respectively. The
1983 Borneo fire consumed about 5 million ha, of which
about 3.3 million ha were in East Kalimantan (Malingreau
et al. 1985). The 1987 northeastern China fire burned about
1.3 million ha (Cahoon et al. 1991, 1994). An important
series of fire events also occurred in 1987, 1991, 1997, and
1998 in Borneo. The study areas were divided into several
damage classes, based on the difference between pre- and
post-fire NDVI values. The QNDVI datasets were then
compared among the classes.

1981 to 1999. Data were downloaded from the following

web and FTP sites: http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov CAMPAIGN_
DOCS/LAND_BIO/GLBDST_Data.html and ftp://daac.
gsfc.nasa.gov/data avhrr/global_8km/, respectively. The
PAL dataset is derived from daily NOAA/AVHRR global
area coverage (GAC), developed by onboard re-sampling
of the five-channel, 1.1-km-resolution AVHRR data to a
resolution of approximately 4 km at the nadir. The NDVI is
computed from stable, calibrated reflectance of Channel 1
red (ch1) and Channel 2 near infrared (ch2) AVHRR GAC
data by the formula (ch2  ch1)/(ch2
ch1). Re-sampling
from 4-km to 8-km spatial resolution (the spatial resolution
of the PAL dataset) was accomplished by selecting the highest NDVI for all pixels within 42 of the nadir. Pixels with a
solar zenith angle greater than 80 were discarded (James
and Kalluri 1994; Smith et al. 1997). To minimize cloud
effects, daily data were reduced to both 10-day and monthly
values, based on the maximum NDVI. The NDVI PAL data
are in scaled positive integer values ranging from 0 to 255.
We rescaled the NDVI values to the original values (1
to
1) using the formula NDVI  (scaled NDVI 
128)*0.008.
Study area and data extraction
Borneo and northeastern China, including southeastern Siberia, were devastated by extensive fires in 1983 and 1987,
respectively. These areas, located in different climate zones,
served as the study areas (Fig. 1). Borneo has a tropical
rainforest climate, with relatively constant temperatures

Materials and methods

NDVI from the NOAA PAL dataset
This study used 8-km spatial resolution monthly NDVI
data from the Pathfinder AVHRR land (PAL) dataset from

Fig. 1. Study area (re-projection from Goode Homolosine to latitudelongitude, Steinwand, 1994). A Borneo, B northeastern China
southeastern Siberia

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throughout the year and no distinct dry season. Any great

variability in monthly rainfall relates mainly to El Nio
events. Long-term analysis of drought frequency and severity (drought given by rainfall 100 mm per month) in Sabah
and other parts of northern Borneo has shown that eastern
Sabah and portions of east Kalimantan (Indonesian
Borneo) have lower drought frequencies. However, there
have been severe droughts in some years (Walsh 1996), and
the large Borneo fire event was related to extremely low
rainfall (Leighton and Wirawan 1986). In contrast, the study
area in northeastern Chinasoutheastern Siberia is characterized by long, cold, dry winters, and short, humid summers. Mean annual temperature is marked by a large
variation between winter and summer, with January being
the coldest month (about 20C) and July the warmest
month (about 20C; Phadnis and Carmichael 2000; Cahoon
et al. 1994).
Monthly NDVI values for each area were extracted from
the 8-km resolution PAL datasets for the period from January 1981 to December 1999 (with the exception of January
to June 1981 and September to December 1994, due to a
lack of data). The Borneo study area covers 1300  1200 km
(i.e., all of the island); the northeastern Chinasoutheastern
Siberia site (centered at approximately 53N, 123E; Fig. 1)
covers 800  800 km.
Detecting fire-affected areas
This research compared pre- and post-fire NDVI values in
order to identify fire-affected areas. Removal or depletion
of vegetation due to fire should cause a decrease in NDVI
values. Thus, the difference between the NDVI before
(NDVIb) and after (NDVIa) a fire can be used to produce
an index for locating burned areas.
A quantitative approach (Fernandez et al. 1997) was
used to differentiate fire-affected from non-fire-affected
areas. A pixel was recognized as affected by fire if

NDVId 
n

(1)

where NDVId is the difference between NDVIb and

NDVIa, and and are the mean value and standard
deviation of NDVId for the study area, respectively. The
value of n equals 2 in the original equation. For Borneo,
calculations of and did not include pixels along the
coast. We assumed that the coastline NDVI would have
unique values, resulting from combinations of sea and land,

and thus would differ from the land-based NDVI data. By

changing the constant value of the above fire-detecting formula from 2 to 1, 2.5, and 3 (as in Roy et al. 1999), the
study area was divided into six classes of fire damage, ranging from no damage to severe damage (Table 1). The n
value, which represents the threshold of the fire-affected
area, was considered to vary with the ratio of the fireaffected area, since the NDVId distribution curve shows
different shapes. As the tail on the right-hand side of the
NDVId distribution curve reflects the severe damage of a
pixel, the degree of damage of each pixel can be evaluated
using this classification.
Table 2 shows monthly NDVI values, selected as NDVIb
and NDVIa. To reduce the effects of seasonal changes in
the NDVI, both NDVIb and NDVIa were selected from
the same month. To minimize cloud effects, NDVIb and
NDVIa for the large-scale 1983 Borneo and 1987 northeastern China fires were derived from maximum monthly
NDVI values in July and August.
Monitoring vegetation recovery after fire
Research showing the sensitivity of the NDVI to vegetation
coverage and activity supports the use of multitemporal
NDVI values for monitoring post-fire vegetation dynamics
(Viedma et al. 1997; Daz-Delgado and Pons 2001). An
increase in NDVI values implies an increase in green leaf
biomass and tree density (Gamon et al. 1995; Foody and
Curran 1994), and an increase in the leaf area index (LAI;
Baret and Guyot 1991).
In this study, vegetation recovery was monitored by
averaging the monthly NDVI of all pixels corresponding to
each damage class (A-NDVI), and by determining the ratio
between the A-NDVI for each damage class and the control

Table 1. Classification of fire-affected areas

Class

Lower limit

Upper limit

Note

1
2
3
4
5
6











2

2.5

3

Not affected

2

2.5

3

Severe damage

, average; , standard deviation. Both calculated from the difference

between the NDVI before and after fire (NDVId)

Table 2. NDVI before (NDVIb) and after (NDVIa) fire used for locating fire-affected areas
Study area

NDVIb

NDVIa

1. Island of Borneo
Fire 1983
Fire 1987
Fire 1991
Fire 1997
Fire 1998

Max. NDVI of JulyAugust 1981

NDVI October 1986
NDVI October 1990
NDVI November 1996
NDVI May 1996

Max. NDVI of JulyAugust 1983

NDVI October 1987
NDVI October 1991
NDVI November 1997
NDVI May 1998

2. Northeastern ChinaSoutheastern Siberia

Fire 1987

Max NDVI of JulyAugust 1986

Max NDVI of JulyAugust 1987

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NDVI (QNDVI). The control NDVI for calculating the

QNDVI was the A-NDVI of the area corresponding to
Class 1 for each month. For Borneo, pixels along the coastline were not considered when calculating and , for the
reasons given above.

Results
Characteristics of the study area based on the long-term
average NDVI

Historical monthly NDVI data for Borneo clearly show

occasional unusual seasonal trends, indicated by exceptionally low values such as those in 1983, 1991, 1997, and 1998
(Fig. 2a). These large decreases in NDVI values may reflect
vegetation changes resulting from fire, haze, or aerosol
caused by a volcanic eruption. In contrast, the seasonal
changes in monthly NDVI values in northeastern China are
relatively stable; it is difficult, therefore, to determine fire
dates in northeastern China from Fig. 2b.
Estimating the location of fire-affected areas

Monthly average NDVI time series for Borneo and northeastern China showed different patterns, reflecting general
NDVI characteristics in tropical (Fig. 2a) and high-latitude
(Fig. 2b) areas. The seasonal NDVI trend for Borneo, which
always has high rainfall (with no distinct rainy or dry season) and constant temperatures, differs from that of northeastern China, which has four distinct seasons. These trends
suggest that, under normal conditions, mean summer and
winter NDVI values in northeastern China differ absolutely. For Borneo, monthly NDVI data also show slight
seasonal variation, but with a much smaller amplitude.

Figure 3 maps five fire events in Borneo and northeastern

China, based on the difference between NDVIb and
NDVIa values (Table 2). Table 1 defines the classes. Class 6
refers to severe damage; Class 1 indicates no damage.
Figure 3a,b clearly shows that areas classified into classes
4, 5, and 6 correspond to reported burned areas. Burn areas
from the 1983 and 1998 fire events (Fig. 3a) in East
Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) obtained by the definition
of classes 4, 5, and 6 resemble those shown in figure 1 of
Malingreau et al. (1985) and figure 2 of Hoffmann et al.
(1999), respectively. The devastated area in northeastern
China in 1987 (Fig. 3b) resembles the area presented in
figures 5 and 6 of Cahoon et al. (1994) and figure 1 of Cao
et al. (2000). These results suggest that a simple subtraction
method can be used to identify the location of fire-affected
areas, both in the tropics and at high latitudes, using 8-km
spatial resolution NOAA PAL data.

Table 3. Mean () and standard deviation () of NDVId in the study

area for all fire events

Fig. 2. Long-term areal average of monthly NDVI for a Borneo and b

northeastern Chinasoutheastern Siberia (data from January 1982 to
December 1999)

Fire event

()

()

Borneo 1983
Borneo 1987
Borneo 1991
Borneo 1997
Borneo 1998
Northeast ChinaSoutheast
Siberia 1987

0.0819
0.0353
0.2900
0.0400
0.0563
0.0100

0.0906
0.1371
0.1070
0.1344
0.1127
0.0503

Table 4. Number of pixels for each damage class for all fire events
Fire event

Borneo
Borneo
Borneo
Borneo
Borneo

1983
1987
1991
1997
1998

Northeastern
China
Southeastern
Siberia
* Due to data quality

Number of pixels in Goode Homolosine projection (8-km resolution)

Coastal line

Unidentified*

Total

814
814
814
814
814

6683
5890
5913
6175
7025

3042
3614
3496
3395
2903

932
1358
1517
1222
731

243
211
187
232
162

147
76
76
122
139

171
47
25
63
253

0
22
4
9
5

12 032
12 032
12 032
12 032
12 032

4898

3532

1320

156

48

46

10 000

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Fig. 3. Fire-affected areas based on NDVI subtraction (re-projection from Goode Homolosine to latitude-longitude, Steinwand, 1994).
a Borneo; b northeastern China

Estimating the size of fire-affected areas

Table 3 shows the average and standard deviation of the
NDVId values corresponding to each event, and this is the
basis of Table 4, which shows area of each class (in number
of pixels). The area under the NDVId distribution curve is
shown in Fig. 4. The NDVId average () differed by event.
A large average value does not always result from a large
number of pixels in classes 4, 5, and 6. The value largely
explains the decrease in NDVI values after a fire. However,

not only fire, but also haze, aerosol, or cloud may cause this
decrease. For example, the high value in 1991 was due to
aerosol from the Mount Pinatubo eruption, which may have
contributed to lower NDVI values (Stowe et al. 1992). As
illustrated in Fig. 4, the NDVId distribution curve is asymmetric and varies for each fire event, as shown by the tail on
the right-hand side of the curve.
Daz-Delgado et al. (2003) showed a significant relationship between damage (determined by the difference between NDVI values immediately before and after a fire)

106
Table 5. Estimation of the burn-area size
Event

Borneo 1983
Borneo 1998
Northeastern China

Burn area estimation (ha)

1

2

Assumed/reported

9 555 200
8 224 000
1 024 000

3 590 400
3 545 600
563 200

5 000 000*
5 200 000**
1 300 000***

* All of Borneo (assumed; Malingreau et al. 1985); ** Only East

Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo (Hoffmann et al. 1999); *** Cahoon
et al. (1994)

Fig. 4. NDVId distribution curve; a The five Borneo fire events, and b
the northeastern China fire event

and severity class. A high NDVId value corresponds to

severe damage; a low NDVId value reflects slight damage.
Image resolution can affect the interpretation of damage
classes based on NDVId values. For example, with low
image resolution, such as in this study, a pixel with
homogenously severe damage is classified as in the severe
damage class, while a pixel classified as intermediate or low
damage may result from two possibilities: a pixel with homogeneously intermediate or low damage, or a pixel with
both high-damage areas and undamaged areas. These two
possibilities make the evaluation of fire-affected areas
difficult.
As the estimated burn area changes with the threshold
value n in Eq. 1, it is necessary to define an NDVId threshold that will obtain a reasonable burn-area estimate. Based
on the Goode Homolosine projection (Table 5), the burn
area can be estimated using a threshold greater or equal to
two standard deviations (2). Using this definition, estimated burned areas were about 50%70% of reported
burned areas. When a threshold greater than one standard
deviation (1) was used, the burn-area size was overestimated for the 1983 and 1998 Borneo fires, but was closer to
the reported area for the 1987 northeastern China fire.
Hence, the threshold for large-scale fires on Borneo in 1983
and 1998 should be between one and two standard devia-

tions. For northeastern China, the threshold seems to be a

little less than one standard deviation. Threshold values
change by site and event. Threshold values of n taken from
Table 5 fall in a narrow range between 1 and 2.
The target size and land cover may also affect burn-area
estimation. Cahoon et al. (1992) described the accuracy of
burn-area estimates as a function of image resolution. Error
in estimating the area affected when using local area coverage (LAC, 1-km resolution), as opposed to global area coverage (GAC, 4-km resolution) AVHRR data, was related
to the size of the target area. For an area exceeding
800 000 ha, both LAC and GAC gave about 4% error,
whereas for areas less than 800 000 ha, error increased about
2.5 times for LAC and 6.25 times for GAC. Thus, lowresolution image data can be used to locate large-scale burn
areas.
Land cover can also affect estimates of burn area
through its effect on NDVId values. An 8-km-resolution
global land cover map provided by the University of Maryland (DeFries et al. 1998) shows that forests cover most
areas of both study sites. Forest covers about 96% of
Borneo (excluding the coastline) and 75% of northeastern
Chinasoutheastern Siberia. Thus, we assumed that land
cover would have only a small effect on estimates of burn
area based on NDVI values in this study.
Although some inaccuracies resulting from image resolution or land cover variation may remain, a simple automatic threshold is useful for locating fire-affected areas in
different climates. Figure 3 shows that the estimated locations of burn areas correspond fairly well to reported burn
locations.
Post-fire recovery
The 1983 Borneo fire
Figure 5 shows long-term monthly A-NDVI and QNDVI
values following the large-scale forest fire on Borneo in
1983. In general, both A-NDVI and QNDVI values were
unusually low at the time of the fire events, and then gradually increased with post-fire recovery.
The recovery process after the 1983 Borneo fire monitored using the A-NDVI is shown in Fig. 5a. The A-NDVI
values were very low in 1983, 1991, and 1998. Based on Fig.
3a, which shows that the burn areas overlapped only in 1983
and 1998 in eastern Borneo, the drop in the A-NDVI in

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Fig. 5. Vegetation recovery following the 1983 Borneo fire (monthly

data from January 1982 to December 1999)

Fig. 6. Vegetation recovery of Class 6 following the 1987 northeastern

Chinasoutheastern Siberia fire (The black and white arrows show
signal in 1987 and in 1988, respectively)

1991 should not have appeared. The extremely low value of

the A-NDVI in 1991 is connected to the effects of the
aerosol layer produced by the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption (Vermote et al. 1997). A dense aerosol layer covered a
wide area, which caused the NDVI values of Class 1 areas to
decrease in the same manner as those of Class 6 areas.
The QNDVI data more clearly signal fire events and the
recovery process (Fig. 5b). No drop in the 1991 QNDVI
based on the 1983 fire damage class accompanied the drop
in the 1991 A-NDVI. The two signals indicating a fire event
shown in Fig. 5b agree with the occurrence of large-scale
forest fires in East Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) in 1983
and 1998, which had partly overlapping burn areas (Fig. 3a).
Figure 5c presents the 12-month running average (6 months
previous, 5 months forward) QNDVI, which gradually increases soon after the fire until it reaches the pre-fire level
after about 4 years.

January to April 1987. However, both the A-NDVI and

QNDVI values from January to April 1988 are clearly
lower. The black and open arrows in Fig. 6 show the fire
signals in 1987 and 1988, respectively. The open arrows
indicate fire signals over the long-term A-NDVI and
QNDVI trends from January to April; the black arrows
indicate fire signals from May to December.
The seasonal variations in the A-NDVI and QNDVI
data make it rather difficult to combine all months to
evaluate the recovery process (as was done for Borneo).
Therefore, to track the recovery of each class following the
large fire in northeastern China, only the A-NDVI and
QNDVI values from July were used (Fig. 7). Both the
A-NDVI and QNDVI of northeastern Chinasoutheastern
Siberia clearly signal the fire event, although the QNDVI
values may better represent the trend. The recovery process
can also be identified from patterns of both A-NDVI
and QNDVI values in each damage class. Generally,
the QNDVI stopped increasing about 4 years after a fire
event.

The 1987 northeastern China fire

The long-term A-NDVI for high-latitude northeastern
China (Fig. 2b) is characterized by large, stable, seasonal
changes; values are low in winter and high in summer.
Figure 6 shows the long-term trends in the monthly ANDVI and QNDVI values for Class 6 for the northeastern
China fire event. The A-NDVI values are quite low during
winter, increase in spring, and reach a maximum in summer.
The QNDVI values show large variation in winter and relative stability in summer. The winter QNDVI variation may
result from low NDVI values due to snow accumulation;
spring variation may result from variation in the timing of
spring. For all months, A-NDVI and QNDVI data provide
an indication of the fire event to some extent. Since the fire
was recorded in May 1987, there should be no signals from

Multi-fire events on Borneo

Evidence shown in Fig. 5c suggests that the 12-month running QNDVI average may be a representative parameter of
the recovery process following each of the Borneo fire
events. Figure 8 shows the 12-month QNDVI running average for five Borneo fire events. Figure 8a shows two drops in
values that reflect the overlap of burned locations in two of
the fire events. Similarly, the multiple drops in QNDVI
values shown in Fig. 8b, c probably also resulted from an
overlap of fire-affected areas. Even though the forest fire in
1991 occurred during the Pinatubo effect, the QNDVI values for the event in 1991 are well classified (Fig. 8c). The

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Fig. 7. Vegetation recovery following the 1987 northeastern China

southeastern Siberia fire (monthly data from July)

QNDVI pattern after the multi-fire events in Borneo (Fig.

8) seems to be closely related to burn-area size. The length
of time following a fire until the QNDVI stopped increasing
clearly differed between large-scale (Fig. 8a,d,e) and relatively small-scale (Fig. 8b,c) fire events. The gradual increase in the QNDVI following the 1983 large-scale forest
fire ended approximately 4 years after the fire. By contrast,
after the relatively small-scale fire events of 1987 and 1991,
the QNDVI stopped increasing 12 years after the fires.
Since we had data only up until 1999, the recovery following
the 1997 and 1998 forest fires could not be observed fully.
Nevertheless, the recovery of all six damage classes was well
described (Figs. 5, 7, and 8).
Although the monthly NDVI based on PAL data still
includes internal problems, such as aerosol contamination
or cloud (Chappell et al. 2001), the QNDVI composed from
this dataset can be used to investigate post-fire vegetation
recovery. The following results support this statement.
First, the aerosol effects from the Mount Pinatubo eruption
were eliminated in the QNDVI (Fig. 5). Second, decreases
in the QNDVI caused by fire were clearly identified in May
1987 (Fig. 6). Third, QNDVI values for fire-affected areas
increased after a fire, and slowly approached a value of 1 for
both Borneo and northeastern China.

Discussion
Post fire recovery using QNDVI
As monitored using the QNDVI, vegetation recovery following large-scale fires in Borneo in 1983 and northeastern
China in 1987 showed similar trends, with QNDVI values
increasing for the first 4 years after a fire. The trends diverged after this period; the Borneo QNDVI reached the
pre-fire level, but QNDVI values in northeastern China,
mainly in the severe damage class, remained lower than the
pre-fire level even 10 years after the fire.
Indications of post-fire vegetation recovery can be observed from the increase in QNDVI values seen soon after

Fig. 8. Vegetation recovery after the Borneo fire (6 months previous, 5

months forward monthly running average); a 1983, b 1987, c 1991, d
1997, e 1998)

a fire, which approach the pre-fire level. The increased values may relate to increases in vegetation coverage, leaf area
index, and biomass. Bare soil has a lower NDVI value than
vegetated areas. The NDVI can also be used to estimate the
leaf area index (LAI; Baret and Guyot 1991; Yin and
Williams 1997). However, once full cover is reached, the
NDVI changes little, even as the LAI continues to increase
(Carlson and Ripley 1997). Normally, the NDVI saturates
when the LAI exceeds 4 (Franklin et al. 1997), although the
LAI can vary from 5 to 8 (tropical forest), 3 to 7 (temperate
forest), and 1 to 8 (boreal forest).
Field-based observations from East Kalimantan after the
1983 fire provided information on vegetation coverage and
biomass recovery for comparison with the satellite data.
The QNDVI-based recovery estimate was 4 years, but biomass recovery apparently takes much longer. Toma et al.
(2000) showed that 17 years after a fire, severely damaged
areas had recovered only 62% of the biomass of a primary
forest unaffected by fire. Normally, aboveground biomass is
a measure of both green and non-green vegetation, while
the NDVI is sensitive mainly to the green part of vegetation. Therefore, there may be only a weak relationship between the actual standing biomass measured and recovery
estimates using the NDVI. This suggests that the NDVI
may be a good indicator only of green biomass with a sparse
canopy (Gamon et al. 1995). With respect to vegetation
coverage, Goldammer and Seibert (1990) reported that 4
months after a fire, seedlings already covered a large portion of the forest floor; Matius and Okimori (1991) found
that 5 years after a fire, highly damaged areas were covered
by Macaranga spp. pioneers. Abundant seeds and favorable

109

environmental conditions in tropical Borneo may partially

account for such rapid vegetation coverage recovery, even
in severely damaged areas.
By considering the relationship between the NDVI
and the LAI, and the time required for biomass recovery as
compared to the time required for the QNDVI to recover,
it is necessary to clarify the significance of using the QNDVI
to evaluate post fire-recovery. A complete recovery indicated by a QNDVI value equal to the pre-fire level may
correspond to either vegetation with a saturated NDVI
(LAI about 4) or the vegetation condition before the
fire. Based on the QNDVI, what appears to be a full recovery after a fire in a dense forest area may be vegetation
coverage with a LAI of about 4, but differs from biomass
recovery. The accuracy of the QNDVI as an indicator of
post-fire recovery is also potentially influenced by resampling or composite processes. For example, changing
from 4- to 8-km resolution by selecting the highest NDVI
value will eliminate information contained in the low
NDVI value, and consequently, it may suggest more rapid
recovery.

Recovery of each damage class using QNDVI

The recovery time is expected to vary with the scale of a fire
event and damage classes. An area of severe damage may
start with a very low LAI value, while an area with less
damage may start from a higher LAI value.
To view the recovery process according to the damage
class, we used a new index, the QNDVI , which was
calculated using QNDVI  1  ((1  QNDVIi)/(1 
QNDVImin)), where QNDVIi is the 12-month running average of QNDVI, and QNDVImin is the minimum value of the
QNDVI for a defined period before and after the fire. The
QNDVI of the five Borneo fires is presented in Fig. 9.
Recovery after a large-scale fire takes about 4 years (Fig.
9a), while after a small-scale fire it takes 12 years (Fig. 9b,
c). High fire intensity and subsequent severe damage often
characterize an area affected by a large fire. Therefore,
recovery after a large-scale fire event should take longer
than after a relatively small-scale fire event. However, the
recovery times for three damage classes (classes 4, 5, and 6)
were similar in Fig. 9; the class with less damage recovered
no faster than that with severe damage. The recovery time
based on the QNDVI was found to vary with the scale of
the fire, but not with damage class. Daz-Delgado et al.
(2003) analyzed post-fire recovery using a sequence of
Landsat images from the day immediately after a fire until
about 3 years later, and also found that less-damaged areas
did not show better NDVI regeneration. The reason for this
fact, however, is still unclear.

Conclusion
This study used NDVI values derived from the NOAA
PAL dataset to locate fire-affected areas and evaluate the

Fig. 9. Variation in QNDVI values before and after the Borneo fires
(a 1983, b 1987, c 1991, d 1997, e 1998)

recovery processes following fires in 1983 and 1987 on the

island of Borneo and in northeastern China, respectively.
Fires in Borneo in 1987, 1991, 1997, and 1998 were also
examined. Differences in the pre- and post-fire NDVI
values were used to identify fire-affected areas and to classify areas into several damage classes. Analysis of the NDVI
over time provided information on the timing and frequency of fire events and on subsequent vegetation recovery. Both the A-NDVI and QNDVI provided recovery
signals, but the QNDVI signals were better. For example,
aerosol effects from the Mount Pinatubo eruption on longterm NDVI data were successfully eliminated from the
QNDVI data. For the first 4 years following the 1983
Borneo and 1987 northeastern China fires, QNDVI values
increased. However, the severe class QNDVI value for the
1987 northeastern China fire was still lower than the control
value 10 years after the fire. In contrast to the large 1983
fire, 12-year recovery periods followed smaller multi-fire
events on Borneo. The QNDVI also described recovery for
each damage level well.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Emeritus Professor Takehiko
Ohta and Dr. Satoshi Tsuyuki (The University of Tokyo) for their
valuable comments. The authors also thank the Distributed Active
Archive Center (Code 902.2) at the Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, MD, for producing and distributing the data. The original
raw data were obtained under the NOAA/NASA Pathfinder program
by a processing team headed by Ms. Mary James of the Goddard
Global Change Data Center. Algorithms were established by the
AVHRR Land Science Working Group chaired by Dr. John
Townshend of the University of Maryland. Goddards contributions to
these activities were sponsored by NASAs Mission to Planet Earth
program. Part of this study was supported by the Core Research for

110
Evolution Science and Technology (CREST) of the Japan Science
Technology Agency (JST). The authors also thank the editor and the
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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